


Beyond the Sea

by The_Lionheart



Series: Other Worlds: AUs of Existing Stories [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: AU of the AU, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Burns, Childbirth, Dissociation, Domesticity, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Injury Recovery, Literal Angel Fiddleford McGucket, Literal Angel Susan Wentworth, Minor Injuries, Nightmares, No Society of the Blind Eye, Nobody has good coping mechanisms, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, People having blossoming crushes they don't understand or acknowledge, Pregnancy, Pregnant Stan, Ripley and Stan BFFs, Ripley is not a good interrogator, Ripley's first solutions to most problems are crime related, Self-Harm, Serious Injuries, Slight mention of Dan Corduroy, Some minor criminal activity, This is GF we're talking about, Threats of Violence, Touch-Starved, Trans Female Character, Trans Fiddleford H. McGucket, Trans Male Character, Trans Mrs. McGucket, Trans Stan, Violence, Zombie Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-02 11:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10943391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lionheart/pseuds/The_Lionheart
Summary: she's there, watching for me





	1. no more sailing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [a terrible case of the past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10330205) by [Edoro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edoro/pseuds/Edoro). 



Natashoggoth's face- well, the face that Ripley thinks of as her 'main' face- twists in fury and agony. The arm that hasn't already shattered picks Ripley up by the neck, squeezing hard enough to bruise, and slams Ripley's face against her mouth, taking advantage of Ripley's startled cry to shove her tongue down her throat in a final act of violation before that arm, too, crumbles to dust. Natashoggoth bites down on her own tongue, separating it from her mouth and leaving Ripley to choke on the floor, gagging and clawing at her mouth to pull the wriggling, severed appendage out.

The last thing Ripley sees of Natashoggoth is a vicious, bloody-lipped grin, the taunting light in her sickly green eyes something Ripley’s seen before and learned to fear.

Ripley blacks out, she doesn't know how long, but when she is awake and aware the portal is still open and there's nothing left of Natashoggoth, just a heavy, nauseous feeling in the pit of Ripley's stomach and the taste of acidic bile and coppery blood in her mouth.

Ripley opens the portal dialer on her wrist. She is exhausted and she can't stay here any more.

Her eyes light up when she sees 46➔\ on the list of available dimensions. She dials it in and steps through.

Ripley Savage, god-killer, takes a step through the portal, and for one hideous moment of  _ deja-vu _ she finds that there’s nothing on the other side for her to step onto, just the too-sudden pull of gravity. Something registers as wrong in the microseconds before she falls- the place she is going to is dark, and the darkness is full of the icy blue light of portal fire, and she hears the sound of reality shuddering to resist being torn open, and for one crazed, confused moment she feels Ford’s presence- his smell, the weight of him in space next to her, the intrinsic knowledge of  _ here we are, here we are together _ that she hasn’t felt in over three years- before she painfully catches her shin against something sharp and unyielding with a clang, and tumbles in a heap several feet down to a cold stone floor.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” a young man’s voice cries, and Ripley has enough wherewithal to groan in reply before she achingly pulls herself to her feet.

Status report, she thinks groggily. Ribs broken on the right side, possibly on the left. Something crunching unhappily in her ankle. She’s slick with sweat and blood and filth, her hair matted against her skull, her glasses grimed to near-uselessness. Her shoulder is still smoking from where Natashoggoth’s fingers dug burning gouges into her flesh, five wide, ragged holes in the completely ruined leather.

She hurts. She hurts so much. Her knees are wobbling from how tired she is, and she is home but something feels really, really weird.

She swipes at her glasses until she can peer up at the man in front of her. The light of the portal has faded almost to nothing.

“F-Ford?” she asks, confused, and the man looks like he’s just been bitten. She blinks at him, taking in the sight- he’s young, he’s looking at least fifteen years younger than Ford does, and he’s, well, no getting around it, this young guy is fat in a way Ford’s never been. A faint memory surfaces- Ford’s brother Shermie, he had a kid around when Ford was sixteen or so, didn’t he? That’s… that must be who this is.

“You’re… not Ford,” she says, breathing out a sigh, and the look of speechless horror he gives her makes her wince. “Hi. Hello. You… must be Jacob?” she tries, grasping at the only name she remembers that might be his nephew’s.

“What?! No, I’m- I’m Stanley, who the fuck are you?!” he cries again, hands curling protectively around his stomach. That- Stanley’s Ford’s twin, though, that can’t- she must be misjudging Stanley’s looks, then, he must have aged a little better than Ford did. Although not much better, because he looks absolutely filthy. 

Not that she looks any better, right now.

“I’m-” Ripley starts coughing raggedly, the pain in her side making black and white roses blossom across her field of vision before it subsides. “I’m Ripley. I’m, uh, I’m married to your- to Ford?”

He just blinks, and Ripley looks around, confused. The room is clearly underground, and clearly a wreck, and it’s rare to the point of baffling for someone to happen to be near when she comes through a portal, but the fact that she’s come out not only in the right continent as Ford’s home, but in front of Ford’s own twin brother, well, it doesn’t  _ feel  _ accidental and she can’t stop thinking about the face Tasha made before-

“Ford has a secret wife now, too?” he asks suddenly, and Ripley shakes her head.

“Not secret. We didn’t meet until he’d been over on the other side for a few years, so he wouldn’t have told you the last time he saw-” she starts, and the man- Stanley- jumps a little in his skin. “What?”

“Ford just… Ford just went in there,” Stanley says helplessly. “He just… it just sucked him up in there.”

“I know, I know. I’ve heard the story, and believe me, nobody thinks it was your fault,” Ripley says, aiming for comforting. Her head is buzzing incessantly; she just wants to lay her head down for a minute or two, honest. “He’s admitted that it was more his own fault than anything else for years, Stanley-”

“He can’t have been doing anything for years, he _ just _ went in there,” Stan repeats, and Ripley stares at him for several awful seconds.

“Stanley?” she asks faintly. “What year is it?”

“It’s 1982,” he says, and she almost lays down on the ground and bawls right then and there, before she realizes that the shape of Stanley isn’t, exactly,  _ just _ a fat guy. “You’re- you’re from where Ford went? Is he okay? Do- do you know how this thing works?” he asks, gesturing around at the room, at the dark shapes Ripley presumes constitute Ford’s first home-built portal.

“You’re pregnant,” she says, and something about his defensive reaction makes her think that maybe once or twice she even heard Ford mention it, but it had never really been real, like a real fact to think about, before she actually saw with her own eyes.

“I don’t even know what’s happening, but I have to get Ford back,” Stanley says pleadingly, and she nods.

“Okay,” she says, feeling gruesomely old even though, realistically, this just means Stanley’s maybe 29 or 28 and she’s only eight or nine years older than he is now. 

“Does this mean… does this mean I can’t do it?” he asks finally, and she shakes her head firmly, even though it makes the room swim out of focus entirely.

“Okay,” she repeats. “Stanley, if you could point me in the right direction of a shower, we’ll… we’ll get started figuring out what to do.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first thing she notices, peeling clothing off in the elevator up, is that it’s a lot colder upstairs than downstairs, and  _ way _ colder than where she just came from. This fact offends her.

The second thing she notices is that Stanley’s… kind of in terrible shape. She looks over at his face and he’s got his eyes averted, as if worried that he might accidentally catch a glimpse of her body. 

“Don’t worry, it looks way worse than it feels,” she lies, leaving her stuff in a pile in the corner of the elevator. “I’ll clean that up, it won’t-”

She stops as they step out into the house, her jaw dropping.

“Ford lives like this?” she demands, horrified and in no small part disgusted.

“Um,” Stanley says behind her.

“Holy shit. Holy shit, look at this goddamn mess,” she mutters, looking around. “Okay, Stanley-”

“You can- you can just call me Stan,” he interrupts, and she nods a little.

“Stan, I’m going to have to do something about this place or I’ll lose my goddamn motherfuckin’ mind,” she swears, pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses. When she turns to look at him, he’s still looking lost and haunted, a journal- one of Ford’s, without a doubt- clutched to his chest, a pair of glasses in the other hand.

She thinks about the first few weeks of rawness after losing John, the numbness after losing Grayson and Elliot, the fury after losing Ford; she reaches out with as gentle a hand she can manage and gives Stan’s bicep a pat.

“He has a spare pair of glasses, you know, and we got him a couple new pairs as soon as we could,” she tells him, and she doesn’t know why she thought that would make him feel better but it clearly does not.

“Do you know where the shower is?” she asks, and he shakes his head. Ripley takes a deep breath.

“Okay. That’s okay. That’s cool. I’m, uh, I’m, I think I’m gonna pass out as soon as I sit down, but I really don’t want to get blood on Ford’s furniture, so I’m gonna look for the shower. You… just… sit tight. I know how to do the portal thing, so I’ll… don’t worry, Stan. You and me. We’re- we’re gonna figure all this out, we’re gonna fix it, we’ll get him home.”

She’s aware she’s babbling. They edge into another (disgracefully filthy,  _ really Ford! _ ) room, and Ripley makes a deeply disapproving clicking noise in her mouth.

“He’s not always like this,” Stan says weakly. Ripley swings her head over to look at him, something that’s been gnawing at her jumping for attention.

“You get hurt, Stan?” she asks, and he nods wearily, shrugging once before wincing sharply.

“I’m an okay field medic,” she sighs, massaging the side of her shoulder with one arm. “Give me ten minutes and we’ll take a look at you.”

“You can really… you really know how to get Ford back?” he asks, and she hesitates.

“I’ve… got some experience. I’m probably gonna need your help, though,” she admits.

“I’m not. Uh. I’m not smart,” he says quickly, and she turns and gives him an appraising look, which he shies away from. “I mean, i-if you- if you know Ford, you know how smart he is, I just, I’m not smart. Not like him.”

“Well buddy,” Ripley says, after a moment. “That makes two of us.” She hopes Stan will smile a little; he does not. She claps her hands together, rubbing them vigorously up her bare, battered arms. She’d only worn the barest essentials under the supple leather combat armor, and she is painfully aware of the fact that the paperthin vest and undershorts Hyde’d given her were absolutely reeking with sweat.

“Well, I’m cold. Strippin’ nekkid in the middle of Ford’s meat locker of a house was a shitty idea I had,” she comments, too-bright, too-brittle. Stan still isn’t smiling. She supposes he wouldn’t for a while. She nudges a door open and breathes a sigh of relief that it’s a full bathroom, although she makes a soft noise of disgust once she turns on the light and gets a real look at it. 

“Stan, I’m gonna guess your brother, uh, don’t know how to own a mop,” she mutters, and he huffs a noise that could be a laugh. “You want to stick around and steam up while I shower?”

He makes a weird sort of noise, and she raises an eyebrow at him. He wags a hand at the bathroom. “You’re not… weirded out to have an audience while you’re showering?” he asks finally.

“Stan,” she says, giving him a small, tired smile. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a little company. Besides. We’re family, okay? I put in my time. You want weird? Weird was Ford trying to be “unobtrusive” the first time I got my period. Weird was every time Ford farted and denied it.”

“Heh. That does sound like- “ Stan raises a hand to rake his hand through his hair and freezes with a pained grimace. Ripley frowns, gesturing at him to turn around, and he shuffles a little in place, turning his back to her. Ripley hisses out a startled sound at the sight of an absolutely ghastly burn. “...that bad, huh?”

“Don’t go nowhere,” Ripley commands, fumbling with the faucet handles. “I don’t want to get the shit that’s on me in that wound- most of it’s blood and I don’t want to like, give you space AIDS or anything.”

“What’s that?” Stan asks dully, and Ripley pauses, sticking her hands under the too-cold stream of water.

“Some kind of disease people get from blood or having sex or… you know to be honest I’m not a hundred percent sure what it is, but people died if they got it. I guess they didn’t know about it yet,” she adds, frowning as she puts her glasses aside on the sink. “Wow, time travel’s a bitch.”

“I… guess it is.” Stan seems dazed, and she can’t exactly blame him. Ripley sighs, stepping into the shower and closing the curtain for the pretense of privacy. Stan clears his throat. “Do- do you want me to like. Look for a towel.”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Ripley murmurs, leaning one forearm against the tile wall as she lets her eyes close. A  _ lot _ of stuff is going down the drain. It momentarily distresses Ripley- what will it do to the water supply, all this monster blood and dirt from another dimension- but she takes a couple of breaths and reminds herself that there’s nothing she can do about it. She feels tenderly around the ribs that she  _ knows _ Natashoggoth broke when she threw her-

-Ripley pauses, frowns. It hurts, but it doesn’t  _ broken _ hurt.

Must have imagined the snapping sounds.

Fuckin’ know it happened, though.

Ripley paws experimentally at herself in the water, and a lot of her hurts, but nothing hurts as bad as it ought to. The deepest slashes are stinging cuts now, but don’t really seem to be nearly as bad as they’d felt at first. Bruises are tender but not as big or deep as she thought they’d be. Even the five fingertip-burns Tasha’d left in her shoulder are barely there, just pinkish circles of slightly rawer flesh. She raises one bandage-wrapped foot- probably shouldn’t have gotten’em wet, to be honest, but the way she’d burned her feet in the charcoal pit at Tasha’s temple feels like a lifetime ago and she honestly forgot.

She has a bit of the burn ointment left. She can dry and reapply later.

1982, Ripley thinks morosely, letting her head and arms hang loose for a moment. Somewhere out there, she’s alive, a seven year old girl. And in five years she will meet Ford for the first time and it will be their thirteenth anniversary. And seven years after that she will be taken from this world and she’ll be here, still, forty-nine years old, a full thirty years older than the other her will be when she disappears. If she ever finds her family- if there IS a family to find- they won’t know her.

She’s probably older than her parents are right now.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there- her whole body hurts but it’s all, also, doing that singing-numb thing that happens sometimes and makes her feel like she’s a balloon tied to herself by a single hair.

She idly considers that she should take off her underwear and the vest that Sanchez had gigglingly called a titsling; they’re not going to get any cleaner with her wearing them but they could dry off on the shower rod and be sort-of serviceable. She rouses herself a little, and shucks them off, clutching both in one hand as she puts the other hand in her hair to feel for any signs of a head injury. Her whole head is a mass of lumpy soreness and tender cuts, though, so… probably best to just ignore it for now.

Stan clears his throat, just outside the curtain. “I uh, found a couple towels.”

Ripley opens an eye to see if the water running off her is clear (it is) before turning off the shower and yanking the curtain open. Stan recoils slightly at the sight of her nudity, which she empathizes with, and holds out a musty, stiff towel that lets off a cloud of dust when Ripley unfolds it. She sighs, giving herself a quick pat-down.

“Alright, I’m appropriately toga’d,” Ripley mutters, tying it around her waist, and Stan hands her another, similarly icky towel, which she rubs vigorously into her hair. It comes away with a lot more brown and red than Ripley expects to see, but… eh. That’s a problem for literally some other time. 

“Alright,” Ripley says, making a face as she experimentally steps on the tile floor with her arguably-clean feet. “Stan, siddown on the toilet, you look like you’re ready to blow away on the wind.”

“Uh,” he says, and Ripley points mutely, grabbing a longsleeved shirt out of her bag and pulling it on.

“Gonna steal one of Ford’s sweaters, too,” she tells Stan seriously, before pulling on a pair of pants that only go to her knees. “Socks if he’s got any. I’m sure he’s got socks. What kinda dingdong would have a science dungeon but no socks?”

“You’re takin’ all this kinda… weirdly well,” Stan says faintly from his seat on the toilet.

“Buddy, the stories I could tell,” she says, putting the towels on the ground so she’s not stepping on ice-cold filthy tile anymore. “Alright, Stan, look. I have some first aid stuff, and I’d bet Ford’s got one around here, too. I can do what I can with my kit, but if your burn looks  _ bad _ bad I’m gonna have to leave you in here while I poke around lookin’ for Ford’s stuff. Is that gonna be okay?”

“Who the hell  _ are _ you?” he asks finally, and she sighs down at the man so much younger than the man she remembers.

“My name’s Ripley Savage, and the same thing that happened to Ford tonight is what happened to me when I was a kid,” she says simply. “And, well. Me and Ford got married, I guess, is the word for it. He’s told me about you.” 

Stan flinches, and Ripley sighs again, resisting the urge to pat him on the head.

“Do you think you need help getting your shirt and jacket off, Stan?” she asks. 

“Do- do I have to?” he asks softly.

“I gotta get to the burn to clean it, is all.” He swallows, and she scrubs at her face. “Look, Stan, I’ve seen it all before. I mean, I’ve seen Ford’s hairy butt out in the sunshine. I’ve seen ev-er-ree-theeng.”

“Yeah, sure,” Stan mutters. Ripley leans down over him and sighs, thinking.

“Gonna take your jacket off real slow and we’ll figure your shirt out. If it went into like, your muscles and shit, we don’t want you moving around too much.” She eases him out of the red hoodie- it’s not a bad little jacket, once you get over the enormous hole seared into the shoulder- and he only hisses a little bit. She murmurs an apology anyway. 

It’s harder to peel the white tee off, and she doesn’t like the fact that he’s covered in bruises, some old and some painfully fresh, even a few nasty spots that look like they’re still developing. She steps closer- weirdly close, to be honest, his knees on either side of her- and he doesn’t say anything when she starts cleaning his burn as carefully as she can. His forehead presses against her stomach and she lets it pass in silence, one hand gently resting on the back of his neck to hold him still as she dabs at the weeping, open skin.

“Well, good news is, it just looks scary and hurts like a fuck,” she says, breathing a sigh out. “We keep this clean and nice, you shouldn’t lose any movement or strength in the arm. Think you can reach that bag for me?”

Stan makes a little sound and leans somewhat, snagging it with one hand. Ripley pulls out the jar of Sanchez’s Special Recipe Burn Goop and, after a moment’s hesitation, digs what’s left of it out of the jar and gently slathers it on. Stan hisses again, and Ripley makes soft, soothing noises.

“Sorry,” she apologizes again. “It’s probably gonna feel weird for a bit. Works real good, though.” 

She puts her hands on the fronts of Stan’s shoulders and sits him up a little bit. “Alright, we’re gonna sit you up and see if-”

She stops, eyes narrowing as she takes in the sight of the shoe-shaped bruise centered on his chest, and he pulls defensively away from her touch, crossing his arms over his breasts.

“Look-”

“Somebody stomped you?” she asks flatly, and he freezes. “And I say _ somebody _ . That’s… new. That’s pretty damn new. I know Ford’s shoe size, so-” She shakes her head, breathing slowly out. “I’m going to kick his ass when we get him back. Just so- just so we’re all aware.”

“Thought you’re supposed to love somebody, you marry him,” Stan mutters, looking down. Ripley sighs again, turning the sink faucet on and beginning the gross and probably useless task of trying to clean her lenses.

“You can love somebody and be angry at them for doing something terrible and wrong,” she says quietly. “Getting into a fucking brawl with your pregnant brother counts as both terrible  _ and  _ wrong. So. I’m gonna kick his ass, because frankly he knows better than do be like that.”

“Ah,” he says, staring at her like he’s expecting something specific.

Ripley sighs, drying her glasses off- still smeary and smudgey, but better than nothing- and puts them on. “Wish I had spares.”

“Okay,” Stan says warily, arms still crossed over himself. Ripley chews the inside of her mouth a little, wondering if she’s missing something vital.

“So… you… probably are cold,” she says slowly. “I’ll see if I can rustle up something to wrap your shoulder up to keep the germs out, then we’ll get a shirt back on you. You know what? You know what else? Maybe we can figure out the heater in this place, huh? I’m sure Ford’s got a heater or a fireplace or, I dunno, something.”

“I’m-” Stan starts, then stops, lifting one hand to make some sort of unreadable gesture.

“How much pregnant are you?” Ripley asks suddenly, and at his surprised expression she mentally rearranges her words. “I mean… how… far along are you? Right? How close are we to, uh, B-Day?”

“I’m not sure, I dunno,” Stan mutters, and Ripley frowns thoughtfully.

“Well, I hope you have a couple days at least. I’ve never- uh- so you’re the first pregnant human I’ve ever, you know, like… met? So I’m probably gonna have to do some research or something. Me an’ Ford’ve never really, uh, talked about… what to do if I ever, you know, caught pregnant. So.” She rubs her hands together. “That’s, uh, we’ll just, I’ll figure it out. Can’t be that hard, right? Humans have been having babies for like, several thousand years?”

“You don’t know anything about-” Stan starts to ask, waving a hand at his stomach. “How to help with this?”

“Um,” Ripley says, grinning tightly. “Well, not yet.”

Stan’s mouth hangs open for a moment, before he screws up his face and asks, “Wait, so… you and Ford, how did you… avoid having that conversation?”

“Uh, well, short answer, it never was an issue because it never… would have happened?” she asks, scratching the back of her head before going back to digging through her pack. “Well, also, hopefully, Ford has a first aid kit around here somewhere, because all I’ve got are some painkillers and a bunch of socks I don’t wear anymore.”

“How do you  _ know _ it never would have happened?” Stan asks, and she bites back the first half-dozen or so answers that spring to mind.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says finally, pulling a soft, ragged jacket out of her pack. “Look, it doesn’t matter in the long run because we never  _ did _ have to worry about it. Stick your arms out?”

Stan blinks a few times before obeying, hands held cautiously out, and she puts her jacket on him backwards, giving his head an awkward pat.

“Keep your front warm while I’m looking for something better than old socks,” she mutters, and skitters out of the bathroom in search of anything Ford might have used for a bandage.

Everything she sees makes her ache. She runs through each scenario as she pads mincingly through the cold gray rooms: She and Stan fail. She and Stan fix the portal  _ soon _ and get Ford back, but Ford’s fifteen years older than his twin brother. She and Stan take fifteen years to fix the portal and Ford miraculously comes back the same age as Stan, but now she’s nearly a decade older than he is. Ripley tries and fails to imagine being useful or necessary or wanted fifteen years from now, fifteen extra years for all her old injuries to catch up with her, slow her down, sap the strength from her.

_ and you certainly proved your worth to him over the years  _ **_didn’t you_ ** _ but it just wasn’t enough he just didn’t want  _ **_you_ ** _ anymore _

She finds a room that says Ford all over it, academic books and papers scattered everywhere, but there’s a couch that looks pretty comfortable and a stained glass window that looks prettily out onto a vast expanse of snow and blurry gray shapes. And there’s a little bathroom, too- just a toilet and a sink that some faintly jogged memory in Ripley’s head tries to label a  _ powder room _ for some reason. The mirror’s the kind with a cabinet inside, and luckily Ford’s kit is inside of that.

“Nice,” she says to the room, her voice falling flat. There’s some tape and some sterile gauze- better than the socks, thank God, because Ripley doesn’t know if she can handle trying to figure out how to rig socks into an okay bandage- and she carries it back to the bathroom, where Stan’s head is bowed over his stomach, greasy hair hanging in tangles around his face.

“Here,” she says, and he looks up at her so she gives him a smile. “Fix you right up.”

They get the burn covered and get a shirt back on Stan- Ripley insists he keep the jacket, since his has a great big hole in it- and Ripley is only somewhat puzzled when Stan pulls away from her in the hallway, heading back to the awful underground dungeon where Ford’s portal sits.

“Where’re you goin’, Stan?” she asks gently, and he looks at her like she’s lost her mind.

“We- we have to hurry,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “We have to get him back, he-”

“Stan,” Ripley says gently. “We’re going to need to take a look at the wiring in those panels downstairs- we might not even have the tools we need to fix any that’ve burnt out. I’m too tired to do it right, and we don’t want to fuck it up. We need to take a little rest, get our energy back up so we can attack this mess properly, okay?”

Stan’s expression darkens slightly, but he just sighs. “Fine. Whatever.”

Ripley sighs, too. “I found a pretty okay-ish-looking room over there with a lil bathroom innit- that’s where the kit was. Let’s get you comfortable before I start exploring too much.”

“What do you mean,  _ comfortable _ ?” Stan asks suspiciously.

“What else  _ could _ I mean by comfortable, Stan?” Ripley asks, trying not to get snappish. “Stan, you’re like, mega pregnant and I don’t know about you but I need to eat and sleep before I’m good for anything, so let’s,” she wags a hand rapidly between herself and him, “get you,” she flaps her hand in Stan’s direction, “comfortable while you wait. There’s gotta be something I can cook up in the kitchen that’ll be good for you and Smaller Internal Pines.”

Stan bristles but says nothing, so she takes it as possible acquiescence. She doesn’t know how much more talking and conversing she can reasonably be expected to do today- she’s just throbbing, in general. She hasn’t eaten since what felt like this morning but is more accurately about seventeen hours ago. She has killed fifty people- and one chaos god- in the last twelve hours.

She doesn’t know why she feels like she wishes she hadn’t killed Natashoggoth. It feels like she cut off her own infected limb- maybe she needed to, but it hurts and feels strange and wrong now.

And instead of coming out of the portal with any hope of seeing Ford any time soon, she’s here in Gravity Falls, mere seconds after his departure, and she has his pregnant, busted-up twin to look after.

Ripley leaves Stan leafing through Ford’s fiendishly weird journal- it’s red and has a Ford-Hand on it and the big number 1 in the middle of the cover- and locates the kitchen after a couple of tries. She’s never really used an Earth kitchen but she can figure out most of it- she’s used to cans that either have poptabs or open with keys, like sardines  and baby eyes , and the thing that she  _ thinks _ is a can opener looks completely useless. She tries, anyway, and manages to dent the first can she attempts it on in a few places before actually forcing a hole in the metal- and then nothing else. 

“Fucking Ford’s fucking-” she starts, and chokes on a sudden surge of silent tears, her body shaking. She muffles her mouth with the flat of her palm, eyes squeezed shut, and thinks,  _ get a fucking hold of yourself.  _

She does, slowly. She digs around until she finds a decently-sized, moderately sharp knife in a drawer, and makes a mess as she stabs the top of the can until enough of a hole is formed that she can pour it into a (only a little bit dusty) pan and start heating it up. She rattles around looking for bowls and spoons, leaning over the stovetop as it’s heating up, and takes exactly one sniff of the soup before realizing that she’s absolutely not eating any of that right now. She grabs one single bowl and spoon and waits for the food to heat up.

She carries the hot bowl in both hands, letting her fingers go from almost-numb to too-warm, and deposits it gently in Stan’s care.

“Eat that up, you’ll feel better,” she says wearily.

“Kind of soup is it?” Stan asks tiredly, and Ripley pauses, frowning.

“I don’t know. Probably beef. Looks like there’s… some sort of veggies in it. I dunno, man, I wasn’t going for like… cuisine.” She waves a hand. “I’m gonna… do something in the kitchen, holler if you need anything.”

“Okay,” Stan says, and Ripley slinks off to the kitchen before she can feel any worse about the situation. She sits down at the table, wishing she’d thought to bring her journal into the room so she could write stuff down. Anything, really. A list of cans from the cupboard or SOMEthing.

She folds her arms on the tabletop and puts her head down, and is asleep before she really thinks too much more.


	2. near beyond the moon

The nagging feeling of guilt solidifies before she’s really awake; she’s vaguely cognizant of a hard surface under her cheek and something angular pressing into her ribcage. 

Awareness comes to Ripley in pieces; there is a dull throbbing in her feet and between her toes, then there is a flash of achiness in her spine and lower back, then there is an insistent twinge in her neck and shoulders. She sits up with a thin, reedy groan, unsure of where she is beyond “indoors” and “not in immediate danger.” She considers the benefits of not moving, but she doesn’t think she could get back to sleep, and once that thought comes she knows she can’t. She twists her torso to a symphony of pops, cracks, and protesting joints- one of these days, she thinks blearily, she’s going to snap her own spine, and then she’ll be sorry. She’s not sure why she thinks that, or why it sounds to her like something somebody else used to say all the time.

Standing is a new problem. A dry electrical pain radiates up through her feet, and she realizes with an unhappy little snort that she forgot to check the bandages on her burns and that something oozy and damp is happening- she hadn’t noticed because she’d also forgotten to steal a pair of Ford’s old socks and her feet and toes were numb from the cold all night. She’s hoping her toes are numb from the cold and nothing else. She has a persistent, unwelcome mental image of having to hack off her own gangrenous feet, and for a moment she’s glad that she didn’t eat anything last night-

-there is a hoarse, panicked scream from the other room, and she nearly forgets who or what that could be before the existence of Stan- of Ford’s  _ brother _ \- slots back into place. 

Running is a mistake she’ll let Future Ripley pay for; she bursts into the room and doesn’t know what to do at first. Stan’s terrified- vulnerable in a way Ripley only very rarely saw in Ford- but of course Ford was nearly eight years older than Stan is now when she first met him, and seven or eight years is a long time to learn how to be on your own in the multiverse. Ripley sits gingerly down on the very edge of the couch, uncomfortably aware of the fact that her thigh and knee are encroaching onto Stan’s personal space and pressing against his side. She makes a few abortive gestures, unsure of whether she should pat or hold something or if it would even be welcome. 

“Stan,” she says gently, and is rewarded with a moment’s eye contact. “Hey. Bad dream?”

“Wha-” he wheezes, and she doesn’t feel  _ bad _ necessarily that he jerks his hand away when she tentatively puts her hand on it. He looks around, eyes shadowed and darting, and Ripley watches him put things together in his mind before she tries talking again.

“Wanna hear a story?” she asks, and his only response is ragged breathing and a slow, full-body shudder, so she decides to go for it.

“You know how I learned to pick locks? Ford taught me. He got me this little kit for my thirtieth birthday,” she says, nervously kneading the tops of her knees. “It was the first birthday that he remembered, and he was so proud of himself for remembering. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d gotten his math wrong and that I was turning thirty-one, but, ah. Anyway, he said- hah- he said he wanted me to learn because I looked just like some character in his nerdy Dungeons Dungeons Dungeons game.”

“Oh my God, Sixer,” Stan mutters, and Ripley huffs a laugh.

“He made me promise not to laugh but I totally laughed anyway, I couldn’t help it,” she admits, gazing down at her hands before lacing them together. “We always thought we’d, you know. Come home together. We talked sometimes about what we’d do when we got here.”

She puts one hesitant hand on his forearm, and he doesn’t move it away.

“The first thing he always said was that he’d fix things between you and him,” she says, and Stan looks resolutely away. “It took a while for him to really… admit that he fucked up, you know. For a while there the only times I could get him to admit to it was when we were both fuckin’ wasted, you know?”

“Wish I could have seen that,” Stan says, glancing at her.

“We got tattoos once, we were so fucked,” Ripley says brightly, pulling down the waistband of her pants to show her hip tattoo, the little dark rabbit that reminds her of the terrifying Watership Down cartoon. “Used to call me Bunny.”

“Wow,” Stan says woodenly, eyes darting away. “Ford-” He pauses. “He has a tattoo?”

“He has a handful of tattoos now,” Ripley says, grinning. “But that tattoo is a big star, right here,” she makes an approximately-sized shape over her heart with her hands. “It says Hey, Now, You’re an All-Star! And it’s got little arms and a face. Used to call him Professor All-Star.”

“Oh. Ohhh,” Stan says, getting that dazed mental-image look people always get when she tells them about the tattoo. Ripley grins, patting him on the arm. 

“Hey. It’s morning time. We should eat something, check how the burns are healing, and figure out where exactly you and I are with this whole portal thing and see what kind of, like, you know. Reasonable goals we can set. Sound good?” 

“I don’t know about you, but I know where I’m at,” Stan mutters, and Ripley sighs.

“That remains to be seen, Stan. I’m gonna start making something to eat while you use the bathroom and whatever.” She pauses, rubbing her arms. “Actually, I’m freezing, probably to death? So I’m going to see what I can do about the heat or at least get us some of Ford’s sweaters or something.” 

She stands, offering Stan a hand up, and he gives it a narrow glance before laboriously pulling himself upright. 

Ford was like that too, she remembers faintly, and gives him a wan smile.

She can’t figure out what thing in Ford’s house will make it warmer, but she finds a bedroom upstairs that certainly looks like it’s Ford’s. (His pillow still smells like him- not the clean-him smell, and not in a fresh way, but the stale sweat odor that he had on him those first couple weeks when they were trapped in the gladiator station.) She squeezes it to her face and chest, letting out one gasping sob, before she reminds herself that she doesn’t have time to do things like  _ have feelings _ or be  _ weak _ .

She puts the pillow back down, patting it with one hand, and absentmindedly thinks that Tasha’d never have stuck her in a cold, dirty house with a suspicious-minded pregnant person. The thought makes her snort a giggle, although she can’t really figure out what about that thought is so funny.

The sweater smells less like Ford; Ripley wonders absently how long Ford had gone between changing clothing before he fell into the portal. She sets a thick mustard-yellow sweater aside for Stan as she searches for socks- her feet don’t feel, precisely, cold, but that is probably a bad sign and she keeps going back to the image of lighting Sparky up and lopping them off at the ankle. She sits on the edge of his bed and experimentally wiggles each toe before putting Ford’s socks on. It’s not gonna be good when she takes the bandages off, but that can wait until after they’ve eaten and she’s taken care of Stan’s more serious and worrying burn. 

There’s a little woodburning stove in the room, which doesn’t seem like it’d be capable of heating up the whole house. With a little cleaning (and a little help to get in and out of here) Stan could be pretty comfortable, she hopes. Ford’s not going to mind Stan taking over the space, and if he minds, she’ll give him a stern talking-to. (He’s not coming back any time soon. Ripley almost trips on the last few stairs, arms full of sweaters and socks. She knows he’s not coming back anytime soon. What if he’s dead? If he’s dead then what?)

(Then she will take care of things here until she’s not needed anymore, she decides, and continues on her way.)

Breakfast is another can of soup- she can’t be bothered to figure out what else can be done, all the labels and ingredients and instructions clamoring for her nonexistent attention- and she and Stan eat it in silence. She stares at the sink for a few minutes, the chicken noodle soup broth congealing gently around her motionless spoon, before she looks over at Stan and beams at him.

“Why don’t I wash your hair in the sink once we’re done changing your bandage, Stan?” she asks, and he gives her a surprised look, his spoon clattering against his teeth.

“Uh, sure,” he says, and she gives him a thumbs up, standing with a slight wince as she goes and dumps the soup down the sink. (Garbage disposals are an Earth thing too, right? She checks but has no way to tell if Ford’s got one. Kind of late to worry about it now, though.) Ford actually has a sponge in here- dessicated and little-used, but it exists- and some dish soap, and Ripley works up a pretty good lather as she cleans the pans she’s used to make the soup, and Stan’s bowl from last night, and after Stan comes over and deposits his bowl and spoon she cleans their dishes from today, too. Everything goes into Ford’s little dish rack, and Ripley isn’t sure what Stan’s staring at for so long, but if he doesn’t have anything to say she won’t force him. She cleans the sink out, so that it’ll be nice and clean before they wash his hair. 

Stan’s burn is doing better- she makes a note to find and thank the Rick Sanchez of this dimension, that goop he invented works wonders- and it’s not too hard to clean and change his bandage. There are painkillers in Ford’s first aid kit; Ripley doesn’t know what these words mean so she lets Stan figure out how much he needs to take and what it is he wants. She has him sit in a kitchen chair and wraps his neck in a towel and washes his hair with dish soap because she’s pretty sure Ford doesn’t know about shampoo yet, or if he does he hasn’t restocked in a while. 

She catches herself spending a little more time than strictly necessary working the soap into his scalp, but- hey, you know what, that can’t hurt. She can’t remember the last time she got the chance to do something like this for Ford; when was the last time, she thinks idly, for someone other than Ford? She’s vaguely distressed to realize that she can’t think of anybody who’s let her take care of them since losing Ford, and the only person who’s done anything like this for her and  _ not _ died is Jheselbraum.

_ And Tasha _ , she thinks, before physically jerking back as if stung, eyes unfocused.  _ No. Not Tasha. What the fuck,  _ **_not_ ** _ - _

“What is it- is there something-” Stan’s asking, struggling to sit up, and Ripley sucks in a breath and swipes the towel at some soap on his ear before helping him up and putting her hands under the tap to rinse them off.

“Just thinking about the last time I washed Ford’s hair is all,” she murmurs, which is partially true and painful enough that she knows Stan won’t pursue it. “Got distracted. Anyway, go ahead and towel your head up so your hair can dry. Do you want to do anything else before we start figuring out how far up Shit Creek we are with Ford’s portal?”

“No,” Stan says, scrubbing the towel against his hair and giving her a strange look. It’s weird to see someone with Ford’s face making eyes at her like that, like he’s not sure what she wants from him. 

“Okay, let’s go downst-” she starts, then stops, frowning. “I forgot to clean up all that bloody armor and shit, didn’t I?”

“I dunno, I guess you did,” Stan says, and she sighs.

“Mm’drag it outside real quick. I don’t want to figure out how to turn the heat on and then stink this place up,” she tells him. By the time they’re both finally, finally on their way downstairs, there’s something jangling at the edges of her thoughts and she’s not sure what it could be, shifting her weight from foot to foot in Ford’s heavy socks. 

“I wasn’t really paying attention last night,” she confesses softly, as they step out. “My portal opened up kinda high, which is- well, it’s not unusual, like, UN-usual, you know, but usually, like, okay, once, Ford opened up a portal and we were four stories up and he pushes me through it and I guess he didn’t fuckin’ think because you know, he just- anyway, that’s the story of how Ford broke both my knees one time,” she concludes, clapping her hands together as they step out into the basement.

“Wait, wait, what- he fuckin’ what?” Stan asks, sounding rightfully appalled.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’d have done if somebody hadn’t found me, probably’ve died,” she says cheerfully, opening the door for Stan. “I mean, I was on the ground level where I was so like I was more surprised to come in here underground instead of on ground level, but I guess it makes sense I was a few feet up, maybe, I don’t know how that works. I’d tell you to ask Ford how it works but he don't know either, so-”

She stops and looks around the darkened lab, frowning. “Aren’t there supposed to be lights?”

“I don’t know, this is- this is only my second time down here, but Ford didn’t have any lights on when I came in, just that little one over the desk there,” Stan says, pointing.

“Hhhhhhokay,” Ripley says, trying for cheerful. She looks around the console room, scratching her head a few times before asking, softly, “Stan, uh, did- did he leave like. Instructions? A diagram? Anything, at all?”

“There’s something in his journal but I can’t really- I don’t know, maybe you’ll know what this means,” Stan says, producing the leatherbound book from before. He flips through the pages until they’re opened to the diagram in question. Ripley looks at it, then looks up at the console, brow furrowed.

“The fuck is this supposed to be,” she says flatly. She engages her translator implant, squinting down at the pages, but either something in the basement is scrambling the alien tech- very possible- or it’s a made-up personal code that Ford wrote and doesn’t properly “exist.” Also very possible. 

Ripley slams the book shut, closing her eyes.

“Okay. It’s okay! My portal generator doesn’t come with instructions, either, so that’s fine. That’s fine. We can rig my gear to the controller. That’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal.”

“You have your own portal machine?” Stan asks, and Ripley nods. “Well, why don’t you use it to, to-”

“We, you know, we need to steer it, mainly,” Ripley explains, opening drawers and slamming them shut after a brief look. “Ford must have something in here that he uses to steer his portaller, though. Something in this computer thing that tells us how to get to where. You couldn’t build a portal generator without building something that tells it where the hole goes.”

She sweeps the room with her eyes, freezing. Stan follows her gaze to the glowing vent on the side of the console, and huffs a small, unhappy noise.

“Yeah, I, uh. I guess you can see where I got burned on-”

“What the fuck kind of foolishness is that thing, Stan?” she asks hoarsely, covering her eyes with her hand. “Did he really not  _ know _ \- did he _ really _ not know what Bill was planning-?”

“Bill?” Stan echoes, and Ripley takes a deep breath.

“That thing… that hot thing at leg-level that hasn’t got any safety grille or anything over it- looks like some kind of heat sink, which would make sense if it wasn’t completely unprotected- but it’s a symbol, Stan, it means-”

She breaks off, taking a deep breath.

“What’s it mean?” he asks finally.

“It means your brother’s a sucker, Stan, it means he’s easy,” she mutters, before giving herself a shake. “It means- well I don’t, I don’t know if there’s an English word for it. She used to write it where I could find it, sometimes carved into people. Sort of a word that means ‘possession’ and ‘victim,’ something she liked to throw around when she thought I was getting too complacent.”

“And now it’s-” Stan looks nauseated; Ripley can’t blame him. “And now that’s branded on _ me  _ like a fucking cattle…?”

“Stan, sweetie, I’m gonna deck your brother when we get him home,” she says flatly. Stan laughs hollowly at that, and she tries not to dwell on it, on the bruises that she knows Ford left on him, on the horrifying burn he inflicted. 

_ you're less than nothing to him, just _ **_ask_ ** _ what he did to his own brother _

She opens the door to the portal room and expects to see something roughly man-sized, something that could be built by somebody with no experience.

The size of the portal- the indecency of it, like the gaping wounds used to transport entire ships and freighters but with absolutely none of the safety features- makes her dizzy. She stares up at it in the darkness for a few moments.

“This is the portal?” she asks softly, her stomach curdling. “This is the fucking- are you fucking kidding me?”

“Don’t you know? You came out of there yourself, right after he went in,” Stan says, and Ripley’s hands are shaking.

“That fucking idiot,” she says, her heart pounding. “That fucking idiot! The fucking size of this thing!” 

“Hey, it’s-” Stan says, and Ripley can hear the defensiveness in his tone, and she brushes past him, her pulse roaring in her ears as she picks up the only chair in the console room. “What the hell are- what are you doing?”

“He knew,” Ripley snarls, her face hot, and she drags the chair into the portal room. “He can’t have thought- he can’t have built this fucking thing and thought for one fucking second it wasn’t gonna be the mess it was!” She drags it over to one of the side turbines and stands on it, wobbling a little as she pries a panel open.

“That son of a-” She cuts herself off, because she doesn’t want to insult Ford’s mother that way. Stan’s mother, either, come to think of it. 

“What’s wrong with it?” Stan asks, and Ripley takes a deep breath, pressing her forehead against cold metal.

“It will be a goddamn miracle if this thing ever gets up and running ever again,” she says flatly. 

“So- so what, you’re saying it’s, it’s hopeless or something?” Stan demands, his voice a little ragged, and she sighs, drawing herself up.

“It’s not hopeless, Stan, it just means it’ll take a little bit longer for us to get this show on the road. It’s okay. We’ll just do like I said earlier, use my little portaller. We’re not in trouble. We just need a way to find where Ford is, once I have that I’ll be able to pop in and grab him. It’ll be easy once we know where he is,” she says quietly, forcing a smile. 

“How long is it gonna take to find him, though?” Stan asks desperately, and Ripley rubs the side of her neck. 

“We should definitely plan on you having the baby before he gets back,” she says finally. “This isn’t a one or two day job… it’s not a week job. This... I have a portal dialer and I think I could get it to work a little better, and I think I know where I can get help with that, but we’re gonna need to build a scanner from scratch if I can’t find something similar enough in the crashed alien ship.”

“Crashed alien ship?” Stan asks, and a hysterical laugh bubbles up out of him. “Okay? Okay. We’ll go find a crashed space ship, the stuff we need might be in there, and if it’s not, you an’ me’ll just build whatever it is we need. Right?”

“Well sure, Stan,” Ripley says.

“It’s just… it’s that easy.”

“It’s gonna be hard,” Ripley tells him, climbing down. “For one, I don’t fucking know where the crashed ship is, but I have a pretty good idea where the map’s located. And Ford’s best friend shouldn’t be too hard to find, he was working with him down here for a year or so, he’ll be able to help us. And I might… I might know somebody else who can help us.”

She rubs her hands together, then gently puts them on Stan’s shoulders, brightening up when he doesn’t flinch or pull away. “Look, it’s gonna be a lot of heavy lifting and hiking and… probably man-handling shit all over the forest. There’s monsters and robots and, I don’t know, demons and freaks and all kinds of weird stuff that might or might not want to eat the hell out of us. And there’s gonna be all kinds of, like, reading and shit you and I are gonna have to do because I don’t know what the stuff we’re lookin’ for looks like. But this isn’t impossible. We will get this done. You an’ me are more’n smart enough to handle it.”

She gives Stan a smile. “And then we’ll kick Ford’s ass together.”

“You  _ really _ sound like you want to kick Ford’s ass,” Stan points out, eyes gliding away from the intensity of her gaze.

“I mean, I’m pissed at him,” Ripley admits cheerfully. “He’ll get over it.” She catches herself squeezing his shoulders a little, and pulls her hands away quickly. “So here’s the thing- it’s way too dark in here. If we can’t figure out how to get the lights on, we’re gonna need to find lamps or something. I’m gonna have to catalogue all the tools Ford’s got here and see what, if anything, we need. We’re going to have to make a list of all the books Ford’s got lyin’ around, because I’m not gonna know which ones are important and which ones aren’t. I’m gonna have to… I’m…”

She sighs heavily. 

“I’m gonna… have to go out in the, uh, in the snow I guess, and find where we can go for supplies.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic,” Stan huffs.

“Yeah, I’m- I’m not into the idea,” she tells him. “It is what it is. I just hope it’s not a long walk, I don’t want to freeze to death.”

“I mean- yeah, yes, but also I have a car,” Stan points out.

“I can’t drive a _ car _ ,” Ripley says, slightly scandalized. Stan stares at her, and she puts her hands on her hips. “I’m gonna see if I can gather up some stuff down here. Stan, honey, would you go upstairs and see if you can scavenge any writing materials out of Ford’s stuff?”

“Uh, sure,” he says uncertainly, taking a step back before he asks, “so- so we’re really not going to be working on this today, then?”

“No point if we don’t know what tools we have,” Ripley says mildly, and he nods, heading to the elevator. Ripley turns and looks up at the portal, and something in her chest flares hot and sick.

“You motherfucker,” she says, and the darkened room blurs. She’s glad that Sparky’s upstairs- she has the sudden, complete knowledge that if it was in her hand, she’d be using it, right now, on this fucking machine. Ford couldn’t have really- he couldn’t REALLY have thought this was okay, could he have? She knows Ford wouldn’t have purposefully done something this awful, this damaging, but she also knows Ford would know better than to beat on his pregnant brother, so-

_ what you know is that he chose bill cipher _

Ripley is not entirely sure when she lifted the chair over her head, but she swings it around and into the metal of the portal. The chair cracks ominously and bounds away, but nothing else happens, there isn’t a dent on the portal’s metal sheeting itself, and Ripley raises a fist and punches the metal, twice, and she raises a foot and kicks it exactly once. It happens only once because a jolt of agony lances up from her heel to her hip, and she howls wordlessly into her hands as she staggers back. 

It takes her a minute to realize that her foot hurts worse than her hand does because her foot was already kind of fucked.

“Oohhh, why am I like this,” she whispers hoarsely to herself, and she wants to laugh but she thinks she might throw up, too.

She slinks upstairs and ducks into the bathroom with what’s left of her medkit supplies. Ford’s socks are already starting to stain from walking around his dirty floors, and the right one is slightly damp. The bandages aren’t even that old- are they? Her mind strains- she thinks she put them on just about twenty hours ago, her-time, although it’s hard to tell because of the slight time displacement and the fact that it’s snowing and dark and awful and everything’s terrible. 

The bandages stick when she tries to peel them off, and the flesh underneath is puffy and oozing. It occurs that she might have done a bad thing by pulling them off, but otherwise it doesn’t look  _ too _ too bad. Her feet are pink, mostly, and super-pink in a few painful, stinging stripes, and that amount of moistness can’t be good. There are blisters on her left foot and between the toes of both feet, but she has a sinking suspicion that she’d burst any that were on the right when she pounded her foot into the portal like a certified genius.

She wishes Ford was here. Ford probably knows what to do with a burn; or at least, she amends, Ford would know what  _ not  _ to do. She wishes Sanchez was here; she’d lived with the guy for nearly a year and he really is some kind of genius, and she last saw him this morning but… but she supposes she’ll never be able to steer her portal sword enough to get back to the one she lived with, even if she meets the local Rick, and maybe the local Rick Sanchez couldn’t have helped her with her burns anyway. She misses Rick- the one she knows is her age, but he mentioned most Ricks are older- and she misses Hyde, because he would have taken charge of this clusterfuck by now, and she misses- she misses-

Ripley stares quietly at her feet for a while, fingers white-knuckled and tangled in Ford’s discarded socks. 

She shouldn’t even think about it. She should… she ought to bum a pain pill off Stan and put her feet up for a couple hours, maybe drink a glass of water and try to nap. She  _ should _ . She really should.

She wiggles her big toes, and the pain is the dull crunch of shattered stone against skin. It’s bearable. It’s livable. If it doesn’t get any worse, she thinks, she should be fine. No need to take Stan’s painkillers. (Would Stan even give her any? She doesn’t know that he would. Does it hurt bad enough to steal them? Maybe. But she won’t. How could she even think it? God, she’s a bad person.)

She pulls on the socks and goes upstairs to see if Ford has any decent shoes she can borrow. For once, she’s glad that he’s a size up from her- it’s always been a pain not being able to swap shoes comfortably, but anything tighter and she would have cried while putting his rubber rainboots on. 

She finds Stan diligently sorting the cobwebbed drifts of Ford’s books and papers into stacks, and feels another stab of guilt that she even contemplated using the pain pills he needs for his awful shoulder burn. 

“I’m gonna clean the kitchen,” she announces, startling him a little.

“Why?” he asks, and she huffs a noise.

“I wanna know that I accomplished  _ something _ after an hour of work,” she mutters honestly, before adding, “and for fuck’s sake, Stan, we don’t want to live the way Ford’s been living. I’m gonna see if I can get these floors mopped or at least swept up or something, too.”

“Oh,” Stan says, and the frustration on his face is so palpable, so  _ Ford _ , that Ripley just wants to fold him into her arms for a second. His expression hardens, and he turns back to the closest bookshelf. “I mean, I guess that makes sense.”

“Holler if you need anything,” Ripley says quietly. After a bit of looking she finds where Ford keeps cups. Well. She finds where he keeps mugs. She fills two with water and brings one to Stan. 

“Pretty sure you gotta stay hydrated with a burn. And with a pregnant. I think you’re supposed to stay hydrated regardless,” she adds, and shuffles back out once he’s got the mug in hand. The silence in the kitchen is awful, and after a few moments she starts humming, and then singing quietly to herself, mostly songs she remembers from her childhood on Earth.

She doesn’t know why she remembers songs and not her family or her name.

“She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak,” she sings softly, her fingers pruning up and drying out from all the soapy water she’s using, giving the sink and counters and stovetop a cleaning they haven’t had since probably before Ford became their owner. 

“I’ve been locked inside your heart-shaped box, for-or weeks. I’ve been drawn-da-dar-da-daww, deh-dawn, did that,” she continues, having forgotten the actual lyrics. “I wish I could eat your cancer, when, you turn black.” 

“Hey, wait, I’ve got a new complaint,” she mutters, punctuating the lyrics with particularly severe scrubs with the sponge. “Forever in debt to your priceless advice, hey! Wait!”

“What-?” Stan says, startled into freezing midstep, and Ripley pauses and gives him a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, Stan, it’s a song lyrics, I wasn’t- I wasn’t telling  _ you _ to wait,” she says, straightening up a little. “You need a refill?”

“Uh, no, just… checking,” he says, and she nods slowly. “What, uh, what song was that from?”

“Heart-shaped Box,” she says absently, before squinting. “Wait, that’s a Nirvana song. It’s… the eighties, right, it’s 1982. I think they don’t release that for another ten years,” she muses, looking down. “Shoot.”

“So you’re… from ‘the future’,” he says, dropping quotes around the words with just the power of his expression. “You gonna hit the lottery or something then?”

“Stan,” she says, looking over at him. “I was nineteen when I went through the portal. I’m… I’ve been gone almost as long as I  _ wasn’t _ gone. I don’t remember no fuckin’ lotto numbers.”

“Jeesh, sorry I asked,” he says defensively. A weird expression crosses his face and he curls an arm around the swell of his belly. She blinks, glancing cautiously down at it.

“Does it hurt?” she asks curiously, squeezing the water out of the sponge. “Bein’ pregnant. Is it…” She motions with one hand.

“Nah,” he mutters, rubbing it thoughtfully. “Just… weird and different. It moved and it feels… just real weird when it moves.”

“Can I feel-” Ripley starts, then stops, her face going hot and prickly. “Oh jeez, I’m sorry, that’s, I dunno. That’s probably a real weird question. I’m sorry.”

“I- no, it’s-” Stan pauses, making a face that Ripley doesn’t understand. “It’s okay. You can… you can touch it, uh.”

“Okay, lemme just-” Ripley tosses the sponge aside and wipes her hands hurriedly on her shirt, before scootching over, hand darting nervously around in a wide arc. “So where- what’s the best- uh-”

Stan takes her hand and puts it on the front of his belly, a little low, and something pushes suddenly against her palm. 

“Ohhhhh my god, it touched me!” Ripley crows, before leaning in close. “Hey! Hey, baby! It’s your Aunt Ripley! Hi, baby! I’m a lot funner than your Uncle Ford! Hey, kick me again, baby!”

She is rewarded with another firm push. Ripley grins up at Stan, dazzled. “Baby likes me already, haha!”

“Heh, I’ll bet,” Stan admits, grinning faintly back at her. “So- Aunt Ripley, now, huh?”

“Well, sure, I’m Ford’s Space Gladiator Wife,” Ripley says, giving Stan’s belly another hopeful rub. “That makes me your Auntie, Tiny Internal Pines! Hey, speaking of which, you picked a name yet?”

“Uh, no, I’m still- I’m workin’ on it,” Stan says, blinking, and Ripley’s eyes widen.

“Ooh, okay, listen, in that case, can I pick the middle name?” she asks, hushed, and he barks out a small, slightly confused chuckle.

“Sure, sure, if you wanna you-”

“Explosion!” Ripley says immediately. Stan blinks, so she clarifies, “For the middle name- Explosion!”

“Uh… sure, okay, I’m not sure if that’s gonna work, we’ll have to see,” he says, nonplussed, and Ripley gives his belly a pat, standing back up.

“It’s a good name,” she says encouragingly.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, glancing aside. “Kitchen looks… clean.”

“Yeah, thanks, uh…” Ripley shrugs, sighing. “I dunno, man. I’ve never lived in a house with a kitchen, so… I guess this is good, huh?”

“Seems okay to me,” Stan reassures her, and she smiles a little. 

Ripley makes lunch- stew, some kind of mystery meat that Ripley can’t really eat without thinking bad thoughts, even though she slurps down a little bit of the gravy and whatever veggies she can pick out- and the bathrooms get sort-of clean, after she loses patience trying to find a mop and ruins a couple of towels cleaning the floors. Ripley makes dinner- ham and potato chowder, which smells so awful that Ripley can’t really see herself even trying it, but Stan seems to like it okay.

Well. He eats it. That probably doesn’t mean he likes it. Ripley just sips water while he eats, her head on the table. 

“So when… when are we gonna go downstairs?” Stan asks quietly, and she picks her head up, blinking blearily at him.

“Not today,” she says softly, rubbing the side of her nose. “I got a project you can do to get ready though, learn the basics. S’how I learned, by doin’.”

“Yeah?” he asks, and she nods. She feels tired and gross- she doesn’t want to stand up because that means putting weight on her feet, and the smell of anything even remotely food-like is making her stomach turn, but she’s pretty sure coffee and something to eat _ would  _ help.

“I’ll get my tools and Sparky and show you how to do maintenance on’er,” she explains, taking another sip of water. “You’ll get to the point where you can take my portal generator apart to the base components and put it back together. It’ll be good practice for when we need to reconfigure shit and build new shit.”

“That sounds like a pretty alright plan,” Stan concedes, moving chowder around in his bowl. “And you said there’s… some kind of crashed space ship thing, right, that might have some stuff we can use to rescue Ford?”

“Yessir,” Ripley says, putting her head down on her forearms again. 

“You, uh, comin’ down with something?” Stan asks, and she laughs a little.

“No, I- no, I’m just… I’m just real tired, Stan. I’ve, uh. I had a rough day before I got here.”

He’s silent for a few minutes, making obvious noises with his spoon but not really eating, before he asks, “Where’d all that blood come from?”

“It’s not a nice story,” she says, closing her eyes. “I, uh. This… something was trying to do to me what Bill did to Ford, and I had to… I had to-” 

Ripley doesn’t know if she can explain it to somebody who’s never had to do awful shit to survive. She inhales shakily, reminds herself that Stan doesn’t have to like her, he just has to let her help until they get Ford back.

“She was killing people,” she says softly. “And she wanted to use me to get to Ford. She wouldn’t stop. For years, she… she was…” Ripley finds she doesn’t want to continue.

“So. Uh. Yeah. Look, I know it bothers some people. Before I met Ford I was owned by a pitfighting ring, and we’ve had to kill a lot of people who were trying to kill us, and after we got separated more… more shit just kept coming. I mean, I’ve killed a lot of people over the years, and I know that bothers… most people, but I… it wasn’t even her or me, Stan, it was her or  _ Ford _ , okay? She- she was-”

“Hey, don’t… don’t worry about it,” Stan says quickly, sounding alarmed. “I just- you were lookin’ pretty rough in the shower yesterday, and you mentioned- hey, look, I’ve done shit I wasn’t proud of, so I ain’t judgin’.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Ripley sniffs, looking up at him. His face is so young, she thinks glumly, and so worried, and so like Ford’s and yet so much younger and more vulnerable than she ever saw Ford get. She gives him a watery smile. “Ford’s going to be so happy to see you when we get him home, Stan.”

“Lady, you really don’t gotta lie,” Stan says, mouth quirking to one side even as his expression shutters. “Look, I know… I  _ know _ what Ford thought of me.”

“I bet you didn’t,” Ripley says primly. “I know Ford better than you do at this point.”

“Like hell you do-” he starts, bristling visibly, and she waggles her eyebrows at him.

“No? I don’t know that ten years into life on the other side- twenty years after your dad kicked you out- he wasn’t still having nightmares most nights begging him not to make you go away?” 

Stan scowls ferociously, which would have been more effective if she hadn’t seen that face a thousand times on Ford. 

“You know he took me to Glass Shard Beach once,” she says softly, and he stiffens. “A different one. One where you and your family were all… missing. The world had ended. Ford always thought it meant y’all’d died, and I always argued for y’all escaping to Cuba or Australia or something, but I guess… I mean, it was at least twenty or thirty years after the place was abandoned, so hell, maybe you all were dead, but I don’t believe in trying to be sad about shit if you don’t know it happened, right?”

She doesn’t wait for him to agree, stretching in her chair a little. “Fort Stan. Cute as fuck, with the little, the tent and the handprints and the-”

“Stop,” Stan says quietly, and she frowns at him.

“He had nightmares for years after that. He missed you so much. He-” 

_ you can tell he cares for the twin, even with everything he despises about the man, because even with all his complaints, when Six Fingers loves someone you can tell **can't you, Ripley** it's never a guessing game, **is it, Ripley** it's never weeks or months of uncertainty dotted with tokens of affection that buy a little more of your time, **right** _

Ripley sighs, sagging against the table. “You can tell he loves you, Stan. It’s…” She swallows dryly. “When you get to know him it’s never a guessing game. Even when he’s pissed at you he can’t stop talking about you and thinking about you. He’s kept a photo of you two as kids on the Stanowar with him for… for literally decades, Stan. He’s looked at a picture of you every day for twenty years. Don’t tell  _ me _ you know how he feels about you.”

Stan looks down at his bowl, and Ripley is hollowly glad that he doesn’t ask if Ford has any pictures of her. 

“I could go to bed,” he says tentatively, after a few minutes. “If you’re tired, too.”

“Hell yeah I’m tired,” she mutters, standing with a creak of her knees. “You gonna sleep on the couch again, Stan? Ford’s got a queen upstairs, you’re bound to be more comfortable there. I’ll help you up the steps if you need, I know catching pregnant makes ya topheavy.”

“I-” Stan stops, squinting at her for a moment. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

Ripley gives him a thumb’s up, dumping the day’s dishes in the sink before offering Stan her arm. He’s sort of… suspiciously silent, and she keeps catching him glancing her way, but if he has something to say he must not think it’s that important. She snags a fresh pair of Ford’s socks after she gets Stan settled, and experimentally punches a pillow a couple of times before presenting it to Stan with a flourish.

“Uh, thanks?” he asks, and for the first time since meeting him yesterday he kind of… sounds weirdly timid. Ripley kind of wishes she hadn’t told him about killing all those people, now.

“Holler if you need anything,” she says, impulsively patting his hair back from his forehead. “I’ll be cleaning up downstairs.”

“Still?” he asks, and she shrugs.

“Well, the kitchen can be cleaned back up, and then I’ll be hittin’ the sack, too.”

“Oh. Okay,” he says, fidgeting nervously with the hem of his borrowed sweater- all stretched out now, she notes, Ford’ll never be able to wear it again, but then again,  _ she’s _ doing it to his clothes, too. And also, she adds mentally, Ford’s a dipshit today and deserves it.

“Alright, well, g’night Stan, I love you,” she says automatically, before blinking and quickly adding, “and goodnight, Lil Explosion Pines, I love you too!” 

She retreats before he can comment, absolutely mortified, and makes it to the door before he calls shyly, “Uh, hey, actually-”

“Oh, yeah, uh, whatcha need?” she asks, whirling in place.

“Probably have a real hard time gettin’ to sleep,” he says too-casually. 

“I can get you a book if you like,” she says brightly, scratching the back of her neck. “You want something that looks vaguely fun or something that looks vaguely important?”

“Uh,” he says, staring at her for a few seconds. “Uh, whatever, really. Should probably be something that can help us get Ford home.”

“Boring it is,” Ripley says, and he huffs a mirthless laugh. She heads downstairs and returns with a textbook on the Basics of Electrical Engineering. 

“I dunno how helpful this is gonna be,” she confesses, “but it might help with some of the concept stuff, I guess. I don’t know, I have  _ most _ of a high school education and most of what I remember is useless shit like history and civics.”

“Fucking same,” Stan says, and she smiles faintly at him. He clears his throat before she can get too far away, and she wonders what exactly he could need now. “So… where are you gonna sleep tonight?”

“I dunno, probably the couch,” she says, confused. “I should still be able to hear if you need me, though, so-”

“Oh, uh, I mean, didn’t you sleep up here last night?” Stan presses, rubbing his open hand on an empty stretch of bed. Ripley blinks at him.

“Uh, nah, I fell asleep at the table last night, so, uh, couch’ll be a nice change,” she says, blinking. “Anyway, I… got to do the dishes, so. Yeah. Holler if you… need a drink of water or help getting to the bathroom or whatever, Stan.”

“Um, okay,” he says slowly, like he’s puzzling something out.

“Okay,” she echoes, and backs out of the room before he can ask for anything else. 

She sleeps okay, she thinks; she wakes herself up in the middle of the night, whimpering and clenching her hands into fists so tight she’s got fingernail-shaped bruises in purple lines across her palms, but it’s just the once and she goes back to sleep fairly quickly afterwards.


	3. just like before

Several days march past in rapid succession: she washes Stan’s hair every other day, and takes quick, stinging showers on the days she doesn’t. Between the two of them, Ford’s house gets- well, not clean, not really, but there’s no  _ actual filth _ in the house and the clutter is manageable and sort-of organized. She gets bored of eating soup plain and figures out Ford’s oven; they mainly use it to bake potatoes and toast stale bread, and it feels like a different meal even if it’s still served with Ford’s shrinking supply of soups and stews.

She teaches Stan how to take Sparky apart; he’s as much a natural as she was, which isn’t very, but he’s got the basics down within the week.They work on it at the kitchen table between meals; they pore side-by-side through Ford’s books and textbooks most nights, Ripley taking notes in one of Ford’s half-filled notebooks so Stan can just focus on relevant information and not get bogged down with unimportant details. They surprise one another by making each other laugh sometimes, but it’s a tense, strangled laugh at best, and they usually stifle it quickly, like people caught in a cemetery.

She’s secretly pleased when he (half apologetically, half defensively) asks if he can put his feet up on her lap, even though it means half the time that she gets distracted from her notetaking because  _ god _ his feet are swollen and painful-looking. Nobody would blame her for seeing a situation like that and doing her best to massage the fluid out of them (she tells herself, feeling like a creep for stealing extra physical contact with him, for leaning against him when she’s washing his hair, for cradling his head against her midsection while she’s cleaning his burn and changing the bandages on it. Fucking creep, she tells herself sternly, but every time he needs something, some help, anything, she jumps at the chance, and it’s way too easy to fall into giving his back or unhurt shoulder a pat whenever they cross paths.)

She’s not super pleased with her right foot. Both feet are scarring over and still have patchy numbness all over, but the blisters on her left have mostly healed, and the pink rawness on her right is still sticking to the bandages when she changes them out. She’s starting to wonder if she’s really fucking this up.

Stan actually walks in on her changing her bandages one morning, startling both of them.

“Jeesh, what happened to you?” he asks, and she can’t think of any way to really explain walking on coals because Tasha wanted her to/because she thinks sometimes she loved Tasha/because it was the only way to kill Tasha.

“She likes it when I hurt myself,” she mutters, flustered, and finishes rubbing unguent from Ford’s cabinet into her soles and between her toes before wrapping her foot back up. “It doesn’t matter. It’s okay! She’s dead now.”

“Okay,” Stan says slowly, watching as Ripley pulls one of Ford’s socks on. “She… the person who you… killed, before you got here?”

“Mm,” Ripley agrees, adjusting her glasses. “Cut me up a few times, got me to do my face before my buddy Sanchez got me to safety-”

“Sanchez?” Stan interrupts sharply, and Ripley waves a hand, easing her feet into the rainboots.

“Guy I met out in space. Pretty good guy, I lived with him for about a year up until I got here. He stocked my first aid kit before I left,” she adds, and Stan frowns and puts a hand to his shoulder but says nothing.

The day passes like all the others- they avoid talking too much about Ford, they work on teaching Stan how the portal generator works and why, they eat, they read. Ripley’s just glad Stan hasn’t asked again when they’re going to go back to the basement, that he hasn’t asked  _ why  _ they haven’t gone back down.

Ripley knows they need to go back down there; when she gets Stan to the top of the stairs that night she sucks in a breath and lets him know that tomorrow they’re going to start cleaning and fixing the computer in the console room.

“Okay,” Stan says, sounding hopeful. “Hey, uh-”

“You want a different book?” Ripley asks, and he swallows nervously.

“You want to sleep up here? With, ah- with me?”

“I, uh…” Ripley trails off, blinking. “I mean… okay, yeah. If that’s what you want, sure.”

“Gets a little lonely up here,” Stan suggests, and Ripley nods slowly, because… makes sense.

It’s probably a good idea. For the first time in years, Ripley’s gone a week without having… somebody else in her head when she’s sleeping. And it probably is a lot warmer up in a bed with Stan than on a couch downstairs alone. And… and okay, Stan probably  _ is _ pretty fuckin’ lonely all night long by himself, a better person would have  _ realized  _ that.

Ripley smiles a little. “Alright, well, uh… yeah, if you want I can come up here tonight. I’ll just go grab my stuff real quick.”

Stan’s got his sweater off and is just wearing a dark t-shirt by the time she gets back with her journal and a pencil and one of Ford’s stupid books; she supposes he overheats at night, but she’d rather sweat to death than be cold, and this place- this fucking house that has been her entire world for over a week now- is hellishly cold.

“Give me a few days and I could probably get that wood stove running,” she suggests, tucking herself into bed on the empty side. Stan eyeballs her for a moment as she opens her journal to the next available page and starts jotting down some notes to herself.

Finally he speaks. “You, uh… you gonna… wear all that to bed, huh?”

“I mean,” Ripley says, putting the pencil down for a moment. “It’s colder than a… than a very cold thing, you know? I don’t have any pajamas yet,” she adds, remembering. “I’ve been wanting actual pajamas for like, fucking… decades.” She scratches her head with the pencil. “Why?”

“I mean, there’s ways to warm up if you don’t want to be uncomfortable in all those, uh, layers,” Stan says, waggling his eyebrows at her.

“I… guess?” Ripley shrugs, going back to writing. “It’s alright. It’s already warmer than downstairs, though, thanks for the invite, Stan.”

“...okay,” Stan says quietly, sounding more confused than anything else.

“Didn’t I tell you I’m from Atlanta?” she demands. “Just because I haven’t lived there in twenty years doesn’t mean I don’t remember what it’s like to be comfortably warm all the time.”

“I’ve been through Atlanta,” Stan muses. “Can’t say I see the fuckin’ appeal.”

“Comfortably warm,” she repeats. “If we was in Georgia now I’d be wearin’ whatever the fuck I wanted to bed instead of being wrapped up like this.”

“Yeah, and what  _ would _ you want to wear to bed?” Stan asks curiously, and she pauses, chewing on the eraser a bit.

“I think… I think my mom had a pair of pajamas, long pants and a button up shirt. It was all mint green and satiney and I just… god, I don’t remember her face but I remember lovin’ those fuckin’ pajamas,” she admits, before cracking a grin. “If we were in Atlanta I could go out to a store and buy me a pair of silky minty jammies, Stan.”

“So sorry I couldn’t consult with you before my brother built an evil science fiction doomsday device in fuckin’ small-town Oregon,” Stan says, and she elbows him gently.

“Stoopid,” she grins.

“ _ You’re _ stupid,” he retorts.

“Both kinda stupid,” she admits, and he snorts. She smiles over at him, and he smiles back, blushing a little bit.

“Um, can I ask you just one question?” he asks, and she decides not to tell him that he already asked her a question.

“Yeah, sure,” she says easily, putting her journal on the bedside table.

“What are you… what are you getting out of all this?” he asks, fidgeting with the edge of his shirt. “I mean, helping me get Ford back is one thing, but you’re… doing all this stuff for  _ me _ that won’t get him back, so why… what’s in it for you?”

“I mean, I dunno,” Ripley says, looking away with a slight cough. “You know.”

“I don’t know, that’s why I-” Stan starts, sounding a little frustrated.

“I care about  _ you _ , Stan,” she says, shrugging and taking her glasses off, putting them neatly on top of her journal. “I would be helping you out even if I  _ knew _ we’d never get Ford back.”

He’s quiet for a disconcertingly long time; when she turns to look at him he’s staring intently at her, his features slightly blurred. It sort of… well, it sort of makes him look more like Ford.

“Seriously?” he asks, after a few more seconds of silence. “Just… out of, what, the goodness of your heart or some shit?”

“Doesn’t  _ most _ people have goodness in their hearts, Stan?” she asks gently, and he shakes his head slowly.

“Not in my experience, nah,” he tells her. He reaches over, tucking her hair behind her ear, and she honestly doesn’t  _ mean _ to lean into his hand, but it’s been so long since anybody touched her who  _ wasn’t  _ Natashoggoth. She draws back, her face prickling.

“I’m-” she starts, and he pulls her close and kisses her on the mouth, his hands cradling her face, and she isn’t… surprised, necessarily, but she’s not sure what it is she’s supposed to be doing, what it is he needs from her. She can count on one hand- well, one of Ford’s hands- how many times she and Ford have kissed each other on the mouth, and none of those times was like this, needy and crowded and confusing. Her hands don’t know what they’re doing; they end up mirroring Stan’s, moving up to his shoulders.

“I don’t know what to do,” she breathes out, twisting her mouth away from his. “I-I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Stan, what do you want me to-”

“You don’t  _ know _ -” he stops, looking up at her, blunt-tipped fingers drawing together on her shoulders. “I mean, it ain’t rocket science-” he laughs faintly, and she laughs uneasily, too.

“Well, I mean, I ain’t a rocket scientist either,” she mumbles, ducking her head a little. “I’ve never- I’ve never  _ done _ any- anything, Stan, I don’t know what you want me t’do.”

“I-I mean-” he falters, momentarily looking as confused as she feels. “Just- just let me do something nice for you, I- I guess?”

Ripley feels like she’s swallowed ice. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. This isn’t right. She can feel Stan’s body against her’s but she feels like she’s somewhere else, too. She can hear him- his breaths, the motion of his body under the blankets- and she can  _ hear _ her heart racing, the thud of her pulse in her ears, and she can hear the wind outside and the creaking of the house and the creaking of the bed and 

_ you didn’t catch on so quickly this time, one sword _

and the sudden hot exhalation as he sighs against the side of her neck and 

_ you’re safe i made you safe just accept this _

and how could she be this stupid?

Something moves against her and she’s wracked with a shuddering, silent sob; when she tries to speak it just comes out a thin, reedy moan,  _ please no _ and she’s just a mortal she’s just a human how did she think she could make it how did she think she could get away from  _ her _ -

“H-hey are you… are you okay? Hey, don’t- don’t, come on, don’t cry, look-”

-she’s going to wake up and she’s going to be trapped in that blood-drenched temple again 

_ but what was Tasha doing while she was sleeping _

and she’s got to wake up she’s got to wake up now 

_ you’re not awake yet because i’m not allowing you to be _ -

-something moves against her, a hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing, and she thinks she might throw up.

“Hey, come on, look at me, just-”

“Please,” she asks, and she hates that her voice is cracking, she hates that she’s begging, but if Natashoggoth doesn’t let her wake up from this she thinks she’s going to lose her goddamn mind. “Please Tasha please don’t  _ please _ don’t-”

“Oh shit, uh- hey- hey, come on, look at me, I-I’m not that- that person, it’s, uh, it’s me, Stan, hey-”

Ripley buries her face in her hands, trying to rein herself in, and tries to think logically 

_ now why would Tasha invent a Stan who looks and acts like this instead of like when she’s tried to trap me with Fords before _

and  _ if this was a dream i could dispel it anytime i wanted and it’s still here it can’t be a dream _

and  _ if this was a dream you wouldn’t be hurting so much everywhere all the time you never feel pain in dreams _ . She scrambles out of bed-  _ see another one for this being reality you have to move yourself instead of the furniture moving for you _ \- and looks wildly around the room.

“Uh- hey,” a frightened-looking Stan is saying, the blanket bunched nervously in his fists.

_ That’s right _ , Ripley thinks numbly,  _ you’re also terrorizing your pregnant brother-in-law _ .

“She’s not here,” she says, clutching the front of her sweater. “I’m awake. She’s dead.”

“Y-yeah, uh, just you and me,” Stan says, laughing awkwardly. “I-I mean, I understand how that c-could be kinda scary-”

“Stan, shut up,” Ripley says softly, pressing her lips together in the vain hopes that it’ll stop the sob that’s hitching its way up her throat. (It does not.) Her face is already wet, so maybe he won’t notice the fresh tears leaking out of her eyes. She swallows drily. “I’m s-sorry I fuck everything up, Stan.”

“That’s… that’s okay,” he says, and she can’t see much of his face from here. “You, ah… you really don’t wanna do what we were doin’ earlier, do you?”

“No, no, no, I- I’m sorry,” she says, straightening up. “Look, if- i-if that’s what you want then we can, j-just give me a minute I’ll figure somethin’ out I-”

“Ripley,” Stan says, looking down. “We don’t gotta do anything like that.”

The relief threatens to crush the life out of her, but she tries desperately not to show it. “You… really?”

“Yeah, really, I’m not… I’m not really into the idea myself right now,” he says, and she breathes a sigh, scrubbing her forearm across her face.

“Can, um… can I still stay up here with you tonight?” she asks in a small voice, and he huffs a small noise and pats the bed next to him. He lets her curl herself around him and doesn’t say anything about the fact that she spends most of the night crying into his shirt, and after a tense morning he cracks a few jokes and they laugh a little louder than maybe necessary.

She gets used, over the next few days, to sleeping against his warm back and against his side and against his chest, to sleeping with an arm curled around his belly and the little nudges of Small Internal Explosion Pines against her hand. She gets used to waking up with his hand in hers, and the bruises in her palms fading. She gets used to gently shushing him when he starts to have nightmares, her mouth muffled against the back of his neck.

He doesn’t bring up kissing or any of that other stuff again; she is unbearably grateful, and she tries to show it, throwing herself into the downstairs cleanup over the next few days, trying to remember if he likes certain foods, trying to find ways to make him smile.

It’s nice. She never really got to be this  _ domestic _ with Ford. She sort of wishes he could be here for this, too, but- well, but if he was, she reminds herself, then he never would have met her, then she couldn’t have been here instead. Privately she thinks it’s better this way; even at his best Ford would have probably struggled with this.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

“When is it ever gonna not be snowing?” Ripley sighs, glancing out the kitchen window.

“Spring, probably,” Stan says, bravely shoveling Ripley’s somewhat unappetizing attempt at mashed potatoes into his mouth. 

“Spring he says,” Ripley mutters, rolling her shoulders back with a series of unsettling popping noises. “Spring’s in six weeks. I don’t rightly believe all this bullshit snow’s gonna be gone by then.”

“You don’t  _ have  _ to believe me,” Stan says mildly.

“That’s right,” Ripley agrees, standing. “Alright, you’re… you’ve  _ gotta _ be close to B-Day, right?”

“I mean, probably,” Stan allows.

“I mean, how big does a preggo get?” she continues rhetorically, putting her bowl in the sink. “So where’s Small Internal Explosion Pines gonna go? Do you- do you just, you know, carry’em around or do they gotta go somewhere?”

“Mostly gonna carry’em around,” Stan says, sounding vaguely amused, although why that is she couldn’t say. “Why?”

“Can… can we make a bedroom? A kid bedroom?” Ripley drops her sponge in the sink, twirling to give Stan a wide-eyed grin. “Couldn’t we? I’ll paint it, I’ll paint that shit all damn day! We can make it like, fancy, like, to look like a sky with stars and like galaxies and moons-”

“There’s only one moon,” Stan tries to interject, watching her with a slightly startled expression.

“Not in the sky I’m thinkin’ of,” she says happily. “Oh please, Stan, please can I make a kid bedroom with a sky on the ceiling with stars and shit?”

“Okay, let’s- stop, okay, with what money?” Stan asks, bemused.

“I mean I  _ can  _ rob a bank, Stan, _ jeez _ ,” Ripley says, exasperated. Stan laughs a little, and she frowns at him until he realizes that she wasn’t joking. “Banks are bullshit, Stan, I mean it-”

“Okay,  _ other _ than robbing a bank for the money,” Stan says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m not- I’m not tellin’ ya not to, I’m just- not- prepared for… okay. Other than that, where would we put a kid room?”

“We have an entire third floor,” Ripley says coaxingly.

“It’s an attic,” Stan says, unamused.

“It’s a third floor because it’s got stairs and attics have ladders,” Ripley replies, holding up a fingers. “I know this, okay, I did see the Goonies like, seven times, I’m pretty sure, and the attic floor is a ladder and the bedroom floor is stairs.”

“What’s the Goonies?” he asks, mystified, and she pauses, before giving him a tiny smile.

“Unimportant. What matters is that it’s an entire floor, okay, multiple rooms. Ford’s only lived here for a few years and I know he made it a huge wreck before we got here but I’m almost positive that he couldn’t have wrecked up the entire attic and everything.”

“I thought it was an entire third floor,” Stan says, and she shakes her finger at him.

“Not. Necessary.” She puts her hands on her hips, beaming. “I’ll go up and take a look around, see how much space we need.”

“Okay, let’s think about this, though, are you really… do you really think-” he starts, before trailing off and looking particularly flustered.

“What, Stan?” she asks, and he waves a hand.

“Do you think we’re gonna be here that long? I mean- I know you said months at least, I know, it’s just- are we really rearranging his entire house and putting in bedrooms and-”

“Yes,” she says firmly. “What’s he gonna do, kick you and yer basketball out? Not on my watch, Tex.”

“Doooon’t call me that,” he says slowly, and she reaches over and takes his hand in both of hers.

“Stan, you live here. It’s official. You have as much right to live here as I do, and I sure as fuck ain’t plannin’ on goin’ huntin’ for real estate once we get that doofus back.”

“You- you don’t know that,” he says quietly, looking down. “The last thing Ford’s gonna want is to put up with me takin’ over his damn house, even if his pretend-wife is sayin’ so-”

“I’m  _ definitely _ his wife. I mean, we even got legally married once and the Fingers Pope was there, okay?” Ripley rubs her thumbs on the back of his hand. “And I also would fuckin’ love to invite Ford to try me on this, I sincerely would, I’m already, I’ve got a list already, Stan, of things I’m gonna be kickin’ his ass over, okay, and you know what? You living here is non-negotiable, that’s it, the end, and if he tries to say anything about it I will gladly bring up the fact that he broke both my knees and left me to die.”

“Cripes,” he mutters, and she smooches the back of his hand. “Well… look, don’t get your heart set on anything, just… check it out and see if we even have room for somethin’ like that, alright?”

“Yeah!” Ripley cheers, bouncing around the kitchen as she cleans up from their lunch. “Alright, so, I’ll head up while you’re… what, you wanna practice with Sparky some more today or what?”

“I dunno, I’m not really feelin’ great today, maybe just… take notes or something,” Stan says, fidgeting a little. “Jeesh. I thought I’d never have to do homework again and _ look _ at this bullshit.”

“Ford’s always makin’ me do fuckin’ homework,” Ripley agrees happily. “I don’t remember ever havin’ to do this much homework in high school.”

“That’s because you can’t fuckin’ remember high school,” Stan points out, and she throws a dishrag at him.

He makes himself comfortable on the couch with one of the half-filled notebooks Ripley keeps finding around, the red journal Ford had tried to entrust him with, and Ripley’s own overstuffed blue journal. It feels weird to read them- hers more than Ford’s, because Ford seemed to treat his journal as a first draft for some kind of academic paper and Ripley’s journal is more like a personal diary- but after a few weeks of trying to slog through the actual academic papers and college-level homework Ford’s got lying around, he’s ready to just read some mindless fluff complaining about weird animals.

And to be completely honest, it’s kind of… interesting to read the stuff she had to say about Ford over the years. Some of the earlier entries are from when they were still together:  _ Love that asshole _ . 

And:  _ Today Ford and I got to go to the beach and we swam around and there were dolphins! Ford had to go into some long thing about how they’re not really dolphins because dolphins are really a fish and those are porpoises but then I made Flipper noises at him until he admitted that colloquially dolphins are also fuckin dolphins. _

And:  _ Can’t sleep. Tomorrow’s Stanford’s birthday and I can’t wait to give him his present. He’s been smiling in his sleep the past couple nights. Wish it was always this nice. _

Stan’s not really looking forward to getting to the part where she and Ford split up, to be honest.

He’s tapping a pencil on an entry she wrote about flu remedies she and Ford tried in an all-purple dimension when he hears a loud crash of breaking glass from upstairs.

“You okay up there?” he calls out. She doesn’t respond. He tries to concentrate on the page in front of him, but the letters all swim together into one grayish mass.

“You’re not gonna make me go all the way the fuck up there, are you?” he yells.

The silence from upstairs is really starting to get to him.

“I’m gonna really be fuckin’ pissed if you’re fuckin’ around up there,” he adds, trying to be menacing.

An image comes, unbidden and completely uncalled for: Rico with a tire iron, staring down a kid- maybe sixteen, maybe nineteen, Stan couldn’t tell, the tire iron swinging into the car window next to the kid’s head, glass littering the asphalt, the kid’s jeans going dark as he pisses himself.

Rico’s not here, Stan reminds himself. Rico doesn’t  _ know  _ to come here and even if he did, he wouldn’t come in through the third-story window.

“You don’t want me comin’ up there,” Stan warns loudly.

The kid wasn’t reported missing for two weeks. Rico had laughed about how there wouldn’t be anything to find.

“Dammit,” he mutters, heaving himself upwards and making his unsteady way to the foot of the stairs. He makes it up- slowly, huffing and puffing, leaning heavily against the wall- and his belly is painfully tense by the time he makes it to the top of the stairs. He spots her standing motionless in front of a broken window and breathes a sigh of relief before annoyance floods into its place. “Hey, asshole, didn’t you hear me callin’ ya?”

She doesn’t move; he sees that she’s not really standing so much as she’s rocking slightly on her heels, and that she’s doing it in a puddle of blood, and that her right arm is coated in bright crimson.

“Shit,” he hisses, shuffling a little closer. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of broken glass on the floor, just a little bit on the padded bench seat next to the broken window.

The window’s triangle-shaped and leaded- there’s an oval inside it with a circle inside that. It looks like an eye, sort of. Part of it is bent out of place; Stan’d guess that’s where she put her fist through it. The cold air from outside is already making Stan shiver.

“Ripley, I can’t carry you downstairs if you bleed out up here,” he grunts, and she startles, like she hadn’t noticed him before.

“Oh  _ no _ ,” she says softly, looking down at her hand.

“Yeah, oh no, you’re a dick,” he says gruffly. “Come downstairs and we’ll clean that shit off your arm, okay?”

“But-” she says, taking a step back but training her eyes back on the window. “But… Stan, you see it too, right?”

“It’s a window with that thing that’s on the dollar,” he tells her softly. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but-”

“I saw the fucking  _ window _ , Stan, I’m not fucking _ crazy _ ,” she snaps, shaking violently. “It’s him. It’s Bill. It’s him- I  mean, it’s just a picture, it’s not- I mean, it is, technically. The window’s a picture of- Stan, you- didn’t Ford-”

She trails off. “Ford didn’t warn you?”

“He  _ said _ he was in trouble,” Stan says, holding out his free hand. “You gotta fuckin’ come downstairs before I leave you here, Ripley.”

“Bill’s a demon,” she says flatly, but she puts her hand in his. She doesn’t squeeze back when he tightens his grip. “He’s a demon and he’s a  _ fucking coward _ -”

“You’re getting blood everywhere,” Stan says quietly. “We’ll figure this out downstairs.”

Ripley is quiet for a few minutes; as soon as Stan pulls out the first aid kit she hisses something under her breath and takes it from him, tweezing a few leftover slivers of glass out of her arm and hand before she quickly cleans and wraps everything. He watches her warily, but she seems… well, not exactly  _ right _ , but she just seems to be thinking hard instead of lost in her head like she was earlier.

“Your brother was different when you got here,” she says after a few minutes, looking older than she is under the harsh bathroom light. “Right? Weirdly paranoid, acting like he wasn’t sure if it was you, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, taking a seat on the toilet and absently rubbing a hand across his still-hard belly.  “And, I mean- you saw the house, he’s… probably been havin’ some kind of episode for a while.”

“Ford isn’t crazy,” she says firmly. “Okay? Ford- Ford’s a lot of things, but he’s not crazy. Somebody was  _ making _ him crazy, and that somebody was Bill Cipher.”

“Okay,” Stan says, trying to be patient but not entirely sure where she’s going with this. “What, so… some guy was screwing with Ford, trying to make him be like-”

“No,” Ripley interrupts, sighing. “Do you… do you believe in like, God or the devil or anything like that, Stan?”

“Uh, no, not… not really,” he admits, eyeing her a bit. She shakes her head.

“That’s… that’s fine. God and the devil, that’s the kind of thing that, you know, you can’t… prove or disprove? So your belief in ‘em, your knowledge of’em, it doesn’t change anything. But there are… things like monsters that sound and think and act like people, and if you know about ‘em that means they know about  _ you _ . That’s the closest I can explain it. Like... aliens. Bill Cipher’s an alien, he’s not from here, he’s from somewhere else, and because he’s from somewhere else he doesn’t look like a human and he can do things humans can’t do, and he is the kind of alien who picks a human to fuck with and then fucks with them. He picked Ford. He…” 

She trails off, unconsciously rubbing the scar under her glasses.

“He sounds like a real asshole,” Stan says carefully.

“He’s made Ford hurt himself. He’s made Ford hurt me. He made Ford build that thing downstairs and if you hadn’t come, Stan, he was going to make Ford turn it on and destroy the world,” she says seriously. “I know you’re all kinds of fucked up about it, Stan, but you saved Ford’s life by coming. If… if you hadn’t, if you hadn’t been able to be there at just that right moment, Bill had the ability to go into Ford’s head and wear him like a meatsuit. I know it was an accident but if Ford hadn’t gone through that portal when he did, Bill would have killed him for sure and he had a real high chance of making Ford kill a whole lot of people on the way out.”

“...Bill,” Stan repeats. “Alright, so this guy is, uh, objectively terrible. How come he hasn’t fucked with us, then?”

“Could be a number of things,” Ripley sighs. “He might be tracking Ford right now- it’s possible, anyway, Ford had to face him right after he went through the portal. Or… I mean, Bill used to fuck with Ford for no reason. He used to fuck with me for the sole purpose of fucking with Ford.” She trails off, picking at her fingernails. “The, uh. The lady I had to kill to get here? She was the same thing as Bill, I think. Some kind of alien with weird powers who just wanted to fuck with a human because it made sense to some weird private plan of theirs.”

“But you killed her,” Stan says, and Ripley nods. “So… so that means this Bill guy can be killed, too.”

Ripley opens her mouth, then pauses, considering.

“Yeah,” she says eventually. “Anyway, he has ways to spy on people, so the odds of him knowing you and me are here and watching us constantly are pretty high.”

“Jeesh,” Stan mutters, grimacing. “Yanno that’s… that’s kinda fucked up, Ripley, how would he-”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “But… look. If you see triangles around, like, more than usual, or stuff that looks like eyes, or the color yellow…” She trails off, frowning as she realizes how that sounds. “Okay, mainly, if you see an eyeball inside a triangle, or a yellow triangle, or a yellow eyeball. Or people with yellow eyes. Then that’s bad.”

“I hate to bring this up, but we also have a huge broken window to deal with in the middle of winter and we’re kinda snowed in,” he points out. “That’s, uh, that’s also pretty bad.”

“I’ll… I’ll board it up,” Ripley says, gaining confidence. “I only got messed up just now because I wasn’t expecting to see Bill, is all.”

“Oh.” Stan rubs his belly, thinking. “So… was your lady friend, uh, also yellow triangle eyeballs, or-?”

“Green,” she mutters. “Eyes. Mouths. She was, uh… she was kinda more complicated than Bill, maybe.”

“Duly noted,” Stan says, wincing. Ripley frowns and reaches over, her mouth dropping open as she rubs his tummy.

“Jeez, Stan, you’re hard as a rock!”

“ _ Heh heh heh _ ,” Stan laughs evilly.

“Oh my god,” Ripley huffs, before leaning over and yelling into his stomach. “Hey! What are you doing that for, Pinesy? You’re bein’ real naughty in there, whatever it is you’re doin’!”

“That’s not the baby doing that, Ripley,” Stan explains. Ripley glances up at him, rubbing both hands on his belly now.

“So, uh… can I ask you something, Stan?”

“Maybe,” Stan says, raising an eyebrow. 

“Did you  _ also  _ forget to try to see if Ford had any books on how to make the baby come out?” she asks timidly.

“I didn’t forget, he just didn’t have any,” Stan says, blinking.

“Oh, hmm.” Ripley chews on her lower lip. “So, uh… we’re… definitely gonna be okay making this baby come out of you, though, right?”

“The baby is mostly gonna come out on its own,” Stan says, and Ripley nods.

“That’s good, that’s cool. Yeah, uh, I vaguely recall that Sex Ed is a class in high school but I uh, you know what, I think I might not have… attended that one,” she says slowly. “So, uh… the baby’s… gonna know what to do, then, right?”

“...are you telling me you don’t know where babies come from?” Stan asks flatly.

“No! No,” Ripley says, smushing her cheek against what’s probably the baby’s foot sticking out and giving Stan a Look. “I just, uh. I know it’s a sex thing, right, and… gametes. The Miracle Of Life. I just dunno, like, what… _ I’m _ supposed to do? During?”

“We’ll figure something out,” Stan says, after a moment of stunned contemplation in which he realizes that he isn’t sure what he expects her to do, either. “You, uh… you gonna be okay?”

“I’ll use a bat next time I wanna break a window, promise,” she says, giving his belly a smooch before using the sink to pull herself to her feet.

“Yep… okay.” Stan accepts a hand getting up, and by the time dinner rolls around she seems to be mostly in a pretty good mood.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two things wake Ripley up.

Stan starts thrashing and whimpering, in the throes of what sounds like a nasty nightmare, and when it starts Ripley just sleepily shushes him and snuggles him closer, patting aimlessly at the back of his head and moving a little so that his head’s on what she (and only she) refers to as her bosom.

It would have been hard to sleep through that anyway, because they’d been sleeping with one of Stan’s legs curled over hers, and that’s not a great position to be in when the other person starts kicking in their sleep. She almost manages it anyway.

What  _ really _ wakes Ripley up is the sudden sensation of being doused in what feels like almost-scalding water from the hips down.

“Stan!” Ripley gives him a little shake. “Stan, wake up! Hey, you’re having a nightmare!”

“Whuh- Rico, no, stop-” Stan pleads sluggishly, and she jiggles him a little.

“Stan, you gotta wake up, you’re having a bad dream and I’m like pretty sure it’s baby time!” Ripley says loudly, and he blinks blearily at her.

“Wha…?”

“It’s baby time! Baby time’s here!” Ripley practically vibrates in the bed, shaking Stan again. “Stan, it’s baby time! Oh my god, the baby’s coming right now, like, okay, this is cool, we gotta take your pants off so the baby don’t get stuck-”

“What are you talking about-” Stan begins, before he wakes up a little more and winces. “Ohhh… geesh, is that-”

“Your water broke! That’s what that is, right? That’s not like a fancy word for blood or-?” she asks, and he shakes his head, confused. Ripley beams at him. “It’s baby time! Right? Your water breaks and then the baby comes out! We gotta- is it pushing time? You gotta push that lil fella out!”

“Ugghhh,” Stan groans, peeling their blanket off of his legs. “The mattress is… gonna stain-”

“Oh, fuck a mattress, Stan, I’ll- I’ll do it, I’ll do the thing, don’t worry,” Ripley says happily, quickly shucking off her wet pajamas- flashing a pallid, olive-toned back littered with fish-white scars- and changing into a clean pair of work pants and another of Ford’s sweaters. It’s quickly becoming a favorite of hers, although after washing it once it’s already starting to get soft and floppy in the sleeves. They’d sort-of figured out how Ford’s washer and dryer worked, but ran out of soap within the first week, and Ripley had taken to washing everything in the sink.

Stan has to admit, having a fluffy, clean-ish towel freshly warm out of the dryer is one of his favorite things lately.

“Come on, Stan, let’s- what do I do, should I go down, uh,  _ downtown _ and get ready to catch, or-” Ripley begins, waggling her eyebrows.

“Ripley,” Stan says wearily. “Hey, uh, love the enthusiasm, but you know it’s- it’s not a  _ fast _ thing, right? It’s… probably gonna be a few hours before I’m ready.”

“Oh,” Ripley says, and she even wilts visibly. “Okay, um… so what do I do?”

“I need help getting to the shower,” Stan says firmly. “These sheets ought to get cleaned and, uh… shit, I’ve got stuff in my car that I’m gonna need, diapers and-”

“I’m gonna do all these things!” Ripley says, bouncing right back. She pounds her fist into her palm and hisses, giving her bandaged fist such a look of betrayal that Stan wants to laugh. Her tentative smile makes him wonder if she just hurt herself for his benefit or if she really did somehow forget. “What else? Ohhh, shoot, we never- we never got a nursery put together-”

“I think it’ll be okay if the baby’s in here with us for a while,” Stan interrupts.

“-I was gonna rob a convenience store,” she adds, frowning. “We’re runnin’ low.”

“On what?” he asks, and she sighs.

“Just about everything, Stan, sorry. I didn’t want to make you worry but I give us maybe two-three weeks before food runs out, and I’ve been wanting to get us more soap and stuff, too.”

“There was a lot of stuff here when we… when we got here, though?” Stan asks, and Ripley shrugs, frowning.

“Ford was stocked up, but I guess he was stocked up for one person and not two.” She frowns guiltily at that, and he sighs.

“It can’t really-” He stops, and she stares at him for a moment before her eyes widen.

“Is it time?” she asks, and he shakes his head, breathing hard.

“No, just… contraction,” he says through his teeth.

“Okay. Okay! It’s okay. It’s okay because I’m here and I’m- I’m definitely good at fixing things,” she says uncertainly, rubbing his back. “Let’s get you in the shower, I’ll nip out and grab your bag of stuff and uh, flip the mattress and whatever.”

“S’gonna set the smell in if we don’t get it while it’s fresh,” he mutters.

“I dunno about you, Stan, but I wasn’t gonna go around sniffin’ the bed like a damn weirdo,” she says cheerfully, walking him into the bathroom and making sure there’s a couple of fresh towels set aside for him. “You gonna be okay while I go take care of that stuff, Stan?”

“I’m not a fucking invalid,” he says, but without any heat, and she leans over and gives him a smooch on the cheek.

“I know. I love you. I’m gonna go do the thing,” she says, before leaving him to shower in peace.

The day that follows is- frustrating, to be completely honest, and if it’s this bad for Ripley she doesn’t know how Stan can even handle this without screaming. Braving the outside world for the first time in weeks is terrible, but watching helplessly like a dick while Stan’s obviously in horrible pain is even worse. She tries to help- getting their room and their bathroom clean is stupidly easy, helping move Stan around is sort of gratifying, and dicking around trying to remember what happens when a baby comes out is worse than just fucking admitting that she knows less than nothing about it. 

At some point Stan tells her that he thinks he should head into the bathroom, something about a water birth, and she sets him up with towels and hovers uselessly until he tells her he wants to get into some warm water.

Giving birth is messy and looks _ painful _ ; she catches herself almost-crying multiple times, and she doesn’t even have to do this. She rubs Stan’s back and murmurs stupid, random shit into his ear and is aghast at how bad he looks and sounds; if people had to see childbirth, she’s pretty sure, nobody would fucking volunteer for this shit.

At some point she’s reduced to babbling- _ you’re so good you’re doing so good you can do it I know you can _ \- and he shakes his head at her but she’s not sure if that’s just, like- should she shut up or should she say something else or should she be telling him to push, she doesn’t fucking know-

-and out of fucking nowhere (or… uh… not) there’s a baby, there’s blood and stuff but there’s actually for-real-an-actual baby, and Stan’s crying but not, like, agonized-crying, and even with all the blood and grossness and pain this might be one of the best things Ripley’s ever _ seen _ , Stan flushed and sweaty and dazed and holding lil Munchkin Explosion Pines, the baby’s face scrunched up and making the saddest little pouty face she’s ever seen. 

She gets them into bed- she doesn’t want to leave their sides, she doesn’t want to stop looking at Stan and the baby, she doesn’t want to be apart from them for even a second- but there’s… there’s just a whole lot of shit to do and nobody else who can do it. 

She ducks out of the room to grab Stan’s bag of baby supplies and starts to put it on the bedside table, and Stan’s- Stan’s crying again, not happy-relieved, not helpless-agonized, but big silent tears falling out of the most heartbreakingly hopeless face she’s ever seen. She sits down on the bed facing him, tentatively putting a hand on his shoulder.

“You wanna tell me what you’re thinkin’ about, Stan?” she asks.

“S-six,” he starts, and she glances down at the weird little bundle snugged up against his chest.

Ripley takes one teeny little fist in her hand and smooths it flat, a smile spreading as she counts fingers.

“What a lucky baby,” she coos, pressing a kiss against a ridiculously small palm before leaning up to press another one on Stan’s forehead. “What a good baby. What a good dad. What a good family.” She swipes at his tears with her hand, smiling wetly. “You did so good, Stan. Look at this little thing you made. I love her, Stan, she’s the best.”

“Yeah,” he says hollowly, sniffling a little as he stares back down at the smallest human Ripley’s ever seen. She makes to stand and he snags her arm, looking frantic. “Hey, uh, don’t- don’t go yet, I-”

“I can stay,” she says, shucking off her damp sweater. “What do you need, Stan?”

“Stay,” he echoes, and after a moment or two she climbs into their- into Ford’s bed on his other side, bracketing the baby with their bodies. She watches the baby nurse with the fascination of one who might never find anything this interesting again, shyly rubbing its back a little before reaching over to put a hand on Stan’s waist.

“Hey Stan?” she whispers.

“Uh huh?” he asks drowsily, eyes half-lidded.

“I love this fuckin’ baby, man,” she admits.

“Yeah, I… yeah,” he agrees. Ripley smiles, watching him doze off, and eventually watching a baby sleep gets boring enough that she starts to nod off, too.


	4. stands on golden sands

The next three days pass in a blur- she knows, guiltily, that she’s getting more sleep than Stan is, that Stan’s still hurting in ways she doesn’t even want to try to imagine, but she also knows that she spent more than a couple of hours staring helplessly at the bathtub full of blood-and-gunk stuck between “sure she’s being fucked with by Natashoggoth” and horror-guilt-confusion at how Stan fucking _survived_ this ordeal.

(Stan… does not need to know this.)

The baby’s four days old and already Ripley has bestowed a bevy of nicknames on her- Booboo Bear and Atom Bomb Baby and Buggy in particular spill out of her mouth like they’re names she’s said before, although Stan snickers and agrees with calling the baby _Pinchy_ the grabbier she gets. Ripley can’t remember having ever met another baby; she wonders privately if these were names her parents gave her, when she was this age.

Ripley makes sure, anyway, that Stan’s set up- there’s a stack of little diapers next to the bed, a stack of clean laundry for both him and the baby right beside that, a couple glasses of water just in case Stan gets thirsty- and she gives him a nice big hot breakfast (split pea and ham soup over the last of the rice) and a couple of slices of toast on the side, just in case he wants something to nibble on later.

He blinks at her, looking at the food balanced somewhat precariously on one of Ford’s kitchen chairs that she’d dragged up here the other day.

“So… where are you going?” he asks finally, and she gives his right knee an enthusiastic rub.

“I’m gonna go get some food and supplies, okay? I expect to be gone until probably lunchtime, so if there’s anything you want me to get you before I go, just-”

He shakes his head, and she leans in to snuffle the baby’s hair a little. The baby, for her part, wriggles and bats her little fists at Ripley’s face. Ripley has no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s fuckin’ awesome.

“I thought you said you can’t drive “Earth cars” or something,” Stan says carefully.

“I’ll be okay walking,” she says, planting a smooch on Stan’s nose. “I’m gonna bundle up now so I don’t die.”

“You’re not gonna rob anybody, are you?” he asks after a few minutes, watching her pull on extra layers of clothing and socks.

“I… was not going to rob anybody,” she says dutifully, and he sighs at her. She pulls on his ragged red hoodie, giving him a wink. “I seriously wasn’t, Stan. We’re gonna be livin’ here, I don’t wanna get arrested. I don’t do well in prison, man, I uh- I really don’t.”

“Hah, yeah, you know I- apparently- I don’t, either,” he says, and she shoots him a small smile.

“So… good! Stayin’ out of prison,” she says. “So look, I’m gonna go see what I can do, because we really need some stuff. Laundry soap, dish soap, shampoo, okay, maybe conditioner if I can get lucky? And food, natch, I dunno about you but I think I’d die if I ate an actual fresh fruit, like a fuckin’ apple, okay.”

“You really think you can get all that?” he asks doubtfully.

“I’m gonna go with a tentative maybe,” she says cheerfully. “Look, at this point, we need a supply run. If I succeed with any of that I’m gonna count it as a victory.” She digs around and finds a ridiculous tan trenchcoat in Ford’s closet, pulling it on. “How do I look?”

“Like a serial killer,” he says, and she blows a raspberry at him. The baby burbles at the noise, and Ripley points at her.

“My best lil buddy here likes my outfit,” she says solemnly.

“Excuse you,” Stan says. “That’s _my_ best lil buddy yer talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ripley says, cracking another smile. “I’ll be home today. Maybe tonight. If I’m not, I probably died, though, because I’m not gonna _not_ come home, okay?”

“Okay,” Stan says, blinking. Ripley gets out of there before she can say anything else _that_ grim and weird.

Five minutes outside of the house is awful; fifteen minutes out of the house is awful because she has the bright idea to use Sparky to clear the snow in front of her and almost gets caught in the resulting cloud of flash-steam.

The problem, Ripley grumbles to herself, is that she’s from the South. And in nearly twenty years of roaming the multiverse, she’s never bothered to fuck with snow! Okay? It’s a personal, okay, it’s a _lifestyle_ choice, and she’ll defend it to the day she dies, but wow, she is… she is woefully unprepared for the experience of being this damn cold.

She tries to imagine Stan and the kid out here with her, and immediately shuts down that entire line of thinking.

Still, though, fuck snow.

She’s not sure how far she’s gotten- only about forty minutes of walking, but it’s slow trying to slog through the snow and she can feel herself moving sluggishly- but she sees a building up ahead and there’s even a couple of cars there. She stamps as much snow off of herself as possible in the parking lot, and again just before stepping inside with the jingle of a tiny bell.

Six pairs of eyes swivel to look at her, which gives Ripley the creeps, but she gives a weak smile and pulls the hood down, breathing hot air onto her glasses to clear the frost already forming on the lenses. It’s a diner- kind of a cute little thing, done up in wood paneling to look like a wood cabin, but kind of a weird long tube shape that Ripley’s sure isn’t standard diner architecture.

“Well, you look colder than a brass bedpan in the Yukon!” a somewhat nasal woman roughly Stan’s age says, a hand on one generous hip. Ripley stares at her, unable to parse meaning from these words beyond “you look cold.”

“You new round these parts, missy?” the waitress asks, giving Ripley a friendly smile.

“Y-yeah,” Ripley says, and is alarmed to realize her teeth are chattering. “Tell ya true, Miss, I’m from the South and this is my first experience with a snowy winter. I’m be honest, I kinda- no offence- I kinda think I hate snow so far,” she adds, flashing the best smile she can, under the circumstances.

“Haha, yeah, you look like you don’t own a lick of winter clothing,” the lady says cheerfully. Ripley glances down at herself, in her patchy assortment of Stan and Ford’s clothing.

“Yeah, not only do I not own a real jacket, but nobody else I know does either,” she laughs, loosening her collar a little. “And, okay, you’re gonna think I’m an idiot, but I’m from Georgia, right? In Georgia you can take a walk in February and not turn into a popsicle.”

“Poor dear,” the lady clucks maternally, which is… interesting, considering she’s got to be at least five years Ripley’s junior. “Tell ya what, you take a seat and I’ll bring you a coffee on the house, warm ya right up.”

“Aw, you’re a peach,” Ripley glances at her nametag, “Susan.” She stuffs herself into a booth and picks up a menu, the words blurring into one another as she quietly does a very quick assessment of the room. There’s a guy in one corner- probably a lumberjack, he looks kind of like that old Monty Python skit- and a noodly blond guy in a black trenchcoat at the counter- probably not a lumberjack, although who fuckin’ knows- and a redheaded couple of teenagers who don’t _look_ like they’re related but who, honestly, can tell? They do, however, look like they might also be lumberjacks.

Susan brings her the coffee and she wraps her bare fingers around the mug, giving Susan a grateful smile.

“So when’d you get into town?” Susan asks, and Ripley ducks her head a little, motioning Susan to come in closer.

“Tell ya the truth, Susie- can I call you Susie?- tell you the truth, I’ve been around for a little bit, but we were snowed in and I din’t know the area well enough to go out lookin’ for supplies.” She gives a shy, bashful little grimace. “And, if you can believe it, we really didn’t, uh, know how to stock up for a cold winter like this. We haven’t felt like braving the cold yet, but we gotta eat, too, so…”

“Aw, you poor things!” Susan coos. “How long you stayin’ with us then, Miss- ah-”

“Ripley Pines,” she says, stirring sugar into her coffee. “All my friends call me Ripley, Susie, and to be honest I think this is gonna be it, you know, I think I’m stuck here.” She grins again. “I’ve heard a lot about Gravity Falls over the years, and I don’t plan on going anywhere else anytime soon.”

“Well, welcome!” Susan says, beaming. “We don’t get a lot of strangers here, but hey, you’re not a stranger if you live here, right?”

“Haha, I dunno, I’m pretty strange anyway,” Ripley says, finally taking a sip and nearly dying. It’s so much better than the awful shit she and Sanchez drank up at Hyde’s place, and the heat and the caffeine are giving her life.

“Nice to get a good hot cuppa joe, ain’t it?” Susan asks cheerfully, and Ripley can’t agree fast enough.

Susan gives her a few minutes to herself, and the guy who is _definitely_ probably a lumberjack leaves some money on the counter and wishes everybody goodbye, before stomping out the door and bundling himself into one of the two pickup trucks parked outside. The noodly guy, Ripley notices, keeps glancing over at her, and she’s not sure if he’s just being rude or what. She realizes she must look... well, at least moderately homeless, but there’s curiosity and there’s blatant disregard for common decency. She gives him a level stare, and he eventually turns away, adjusting his glasses and hunkering over his plate.

Susan makes her way back over after checking on the teenagers, and Ripley gives her a smile.

“Susie, I’d hate to be a burden on your kindness any longer, but I would like to run an idea or two by somebody who don’t got a stake in these matters,” Ripley says in a confiding tone. “Look, the thing what brought me up here is… well, it’s a personal matter, somebody got into a family way and we’re just trying to make the best of what we got, you know? The two things I need right now, honestly, is a payin’ job and directions to the nearest grocery store. I don’t suppose you’d be able to tell me where I could get either one of those things, couldja?”

Ripley can see the moment Susan falls for it- although, she reminds herself, it’s not exactly a con if it’s the straight and entire truth- and the other woman gives her arm a pat.

“Tell ya what, honey. I’ll get Drew to put together a silver dollar plate for ya- comes with an egg and a couple maple links- staff eats free,” she explains, jotting something down on her notepad. Ripley blinks, not entirely understanding what she’s being offered but reasonably sure it’s hot food that isn’t soup. “You know how to make pancakes, honey?”

“Nah, but I’m a quick study,” Ripley says, her mouth dropping open. “W-wait, you- you’re offering me a- a job? Just like that? I-I mean I could be a serial killer or something!”

“You a serial killer, dear?” Susan asks. Ripley flushes and shakes her head, and Susan pats her arm. “I can’t put you on officially, but our handyman went and got his leg broken, and Drew’s our only cook but he’s also the only other person who knows how to fix our Fryolator when it’s actin’ up, which wouldn’t be an issue if he wasn’t too busy cookin’ to take a look at it- you, uh, you see where I’m going with this, honey?”

“Yeah, I think I kinda… get the gist,” Ripley says, chewing her lower lip. “You don’t think having a total amateur making pancakes is gonna, uh, gonna be a problem?”

“Sweetie, it’s not exactly haute cuisine,” Susan says kindly, before letting loose with a slightly grating laugh that Ripley will gently file under “acquired tastes.” She gives Susan a hopeful little smile, and Susan beams at her. “It’ll take ten minutes to teach you how to make a lumberjack-worthy flapjack, and then we’ll just have you cover for him until he’s done fixing things for us. Sound good, honey?”

“Sounds great,” Ripley says honestly, because holy crap she didn’t expect this to work out, she thought she’d have to swipe someone’s wallet or something, and- well, okay, it might take longer than she originally thought to get back to Stan and the baby, but she’s making, like, connections, that’s good, right?

The silver dollar plate, it turns out, is six little pancakes, an egg- a little too hard to be considered “over easy” but close enough to Ripley’s request that she doesn’t mind at all- and a couple of small things that smell like the thick brown syrup and taste like meat. It’s only after she’s done eating that she decides they might be sausages.

Drew is a bemused older man in an apron and a paper hat- he teaches her how to make the pancakes and how to make bacon and heat up the sausages on the griddle, and then unceremoniously leaves her to it for nearly two entire hours. It actually does get easier the more she goes on, and she’s almost sad to hand the apron and hat back to Drew when he’s done fixing the Fryolator.

Only then- as Susan explains- they could really use a little more help, could she wash a sinkful of dishes or two? Frankly, Ripley could wash dishes all day long, but she clears out the dirty dishes and has them drying soon enough, wiping out the sink for good measure. Susan likes to gossip, and Ripley likes to listen, interjecting once in a while with appropriate noises whenever Susan gives her a particularly juicy-sounding tidbit.

Finally, though, Susan runs out of things for Ripley to do, taking her back into the supply room and pressing a handful of crumpled bills into her hand.

“Here, sugar,” she says, smiling. “Three hours minimum wage, plus I figured you should get a split off the tips from while you were workin’. Oh! And don’t let me forget-”

Susan grabs a brown paper bag off the shelf and puts it in Ripley’s arms- it’s heavy, which is surprising. Ripley glances inside- a big box of pancake mix, a hefty bottle of maple syrup, a tub of butter, and what looks like a couple dozen eggs.

“Wh-what is- what-” Ripley says, fumbling for words, and Susan winks at her.

“So you can practice at home, sweetie. Water for regular, buttermilk for fancy, okay?”

Ripley stares at her, and she knows she’s about to cry and she doesn’t think she can stop herself.

“I, um, Susie, I- _thank you_ , I really-” Ripley squeezes her eyes shut; burning tears roll down her face and she doesn’t know why she’s crying, it’s not like- it’s not like she _never_ got any charity over the years, but-

“Hey, next time we need a hand, we know who we’ll call, right?” Susan asks kindly, and Ripley sniffles loudly in response. It takes another minute or two to get herself under control, and Ripley doesn’t begrudge Susan the fact that at the last second the motion for a hug turns into an awkward pat on the back. Her clothes probably… smell sweaty and a little funky from the dish soap.

Ripley’s pulling her assorted borrowed coats and jackets back on and imagining making the baby eat teeny little pancakes when someone approaches her with a strangled cough noise. She turns and realizes that the noise was, in fact, the noodly blond guy in the trench coat, apparently in the act of clearing his throat to get her attention.

He’s pale and shaking under the heavy coat, despite the heat inside, and there are dark smudges around his bloodshot blue eyes. “Ma’am, I couldn’t help but overhear some’a yer conversation earlier-”

“Yeeaah, and it almost four hours ago, too,” she interjects with a smile. He’s got a Southern accent- different from hers, but still nice to hear after so long. “I take it you’re a fellow transplant, huh?”

“W-well that remains to be seen, I suppose,” the man says, giving her a tortured, nervous expression that she’s positive was meant to be a smile. “B-but you said you, ah, you walked here, right? S-so you must not live too far? I-I could give you a ride home, since- ah-” He gestures at the heavy bag on the floor next to her.

Ripley eyes him coolly. He’s quite a bit shorter than she is- maybe two or three inches shorter than Stan and Ford, she’d guess this guy’s five-six in stocking feet- and he’s roughly half as wide as she is. She’s reasonably certain she could snap this guy’s arm like a twig if he tried anything funny.

“Sure thing, friend, I’d surely appreciate the gesture,” she says, pulling her hood up and hefting the bag into her arms. She lets him get the door for her and follows him to a tan little car that looks like it’s as full of random paperwork and books as Ford’s house was a month ago. He pushes papers around and sweeps an armful of detritus off the front passenger seat, and she sits primly down and settles the brown paper bag on her lap.

“So,” he says, his voice shaking as he pulls out of the parking lot. “You, ah- where’re you, then?”

“Gopher Road,” she says happily, watching him move jerkily and noting with significant interest the way his hand occasionally hovers near a not-suspicious-at-all lump in his coat.

“Oh, th-that’s right. You said your name was Pines, huh? Like the fella that lives up at 618, right?” His knuckles are white on the wheel.

“Uh huh,” Ripley says, glancing at the road. She’s feeling like maybe getting into a car with the world’s most shaky would-be attacker might not have been a great idea- every turn is making her heart race, and she’s sure that they can’t be driving at a sensible speed. “You know him?”

“Well, I- a bit,” the man says, eyes on the narrow forest road. “How, uh, how is he?”

“Well, you know how it is, family troubles, new situations, but nothing we can’t tackle together,” Ripley says, blinking. It didn’t seem nearly this short of a walk, but they’re already pulling up to the long driveway where Stan’s red car is parked. “Thanks for the ride- say, I didn’t catch your name earlier-”

“Miss, I’m sorry,” he says miserably, putting the car in park. “I-I know family’s important and I know you just want to help him-”

“Um, beg yer pardon,” Ripley says flatly.

“-he’s meddlin’ with things that can’t be helped and this- this is for yer own good, I swear,” he says, pulling out a gun from the coincidentally gun-shaped bulge he’s been reaching instinctively for with every bump of the road.

Ripley tries to act surprised.

“Hey, wow, no need to do anything I’m gonna regret later,” she says quickly. “Hey, mister, is that your only pair of glasses or do you have a spare?”

“Wh-what?” he asks, pointing the gun shakily in her general direction. “N-no, listen, Miss Pines, this-”

“That’s a shame,” she says, reaching over and slamming his head face-first into the steering wheel. He drops the gun with a startled squawk, blood flowing freely from his nose and from a cut over his eye where his (now broken) glasses had pushed up into his forehead. His hands fly up to his face and she leans over, daintily picking the gun up and depositing it in her grocery bag.

“Y-y-you-” he starts, and she raises her eyebrows at him, yanking the keys out of the ignition.

“Yeah, you pulled a gun on me,” she says calmly. “You got something against Stanford Pines, friend?”

“He’s gonna destroy the world!” the man howls, scrabbling for his door to escape.

“You’re makin’ this harder on yourself than it’s gotta be,” she says, frowning. “So- you- oh,” she says brightly. “Say, I know who you are, you’re- oh, what’s the name- Fiddleford, right? Ford’s told me about you!”

The man- Fiddleford, Ripley’s sure of it- manages to get his door open and tries to throw himself out into the snow, which would have been easier to do if he’d remembered to unfasten his seat belt first. Ripley sighs, putting the grocery bag safely in the backseat before unbuckling herself and stepping out.

He’s got the belt off soon enough but by that time she’s already rounded the front of the car; his legs are shorter than hers and she doubts that even in the best of circumstances he could have outrun her. She wastes no time in catching up to him, wrapping her arms around his chest to pin his arms against his sides and lifting him a couple of inches off the ground.

He lets out an unholy screech and starts flailing his legs at that, and she puts her mouth right next to his ear.

“If you kick me one more time,” she growls softly, “you’re not gonna like how this ends up.”

“He’s meddlin’ in things beyond our realm,” he pants. “He’s meddlin’ with _powers_ and consortin’ with-”

“Demons,” Ripley says flatly. “One demon specifically. Yes. I know. It’s terrible. Now if you-”

He jerks in her arms and smashes the back of his head against her face, and something in her nose crunches. Ripley staggers as he jackknifes out of her arms, too stunned at the sudden pain and the sheer audacity of his move to stop him.

He makes it another ten yards or so into the treeline, where the snow is a little less deep, before she catches the backs of his legs in a tackle. He squirms and she sits on his chest, knocking the wind out of him even as he continues to try to get away from her.

“Stay down!” she roars, drawing a fist back, and he cringes under her, dirt and leaves and pine needles sticking to the blood on his face. She stares down at him, panting and aching, the cold air like a layer of needles against her bare face and hands, her chest hurting with every breath, and slowly, slowly, she lowers her fist.

“Stay down,” she repeats. “You picked the wrong fucking Pines to try to fuck with, buddy, and if ya think you’re gettin’ away from this without givin’ me a few answers you’re flat wrong.”

“Y-you’re just as bad as he is,” he breathes out underneath her, and she gives a low, evil chuckle.

“Honey, you have _no idea_ how bad I am,” she promises, grabbing the collar of his shirt. “Now here’s what’s gonna happen, McGucket. You’re gonna go inside that house there. You’re gonna sit where I put you and so help me, if you move from that spot I’m liable to break somethin’. And when I ask you questions you’re _gonna_ fuckin’ answer’em, we clear?”

“Or what,” he spits out, and she leans down and pats his cheek.

“I can think of a few things,” she says darkly, and he flinches. She gets up, hauling him to his feet, and breathes out a steamy breath. “Can’t fuckin’ believe this. I just got done feelin’ weepy at the kindness of humanity and you pull this shit. Cannot fuckin’ believe.”

“He’s crazy, and if you think I’m gonna help him again after what he done, you’re crazy,” McGucket says defiantly, stumbling as Ripley half-leads, half-drags him out of the woods and up to the snow.

“You really don’t get to be throwin’ names around,” she tells him, walking him up to his car. “Considering, really, I was just minding my own business, _trying_ to feed my family, when you decided of all things to pull a gun on me, _an actual firearm_ as if I’m gonna stand for one damn second-”

“No, see- n-no,” he tries to interrupt.

“-well, honey, I’ll put up with an ocean of bullshit but I’ve fought too long and hard to get killed in the front seat of some shitty little Chevrolet by some little _wiener_ who’s supposed to be Ford’s best friend _supposedly_ -”

“Ma’am, no, it’s not- that’s _not_ \- I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you none, see- no,” he stammers out.

She wraps a hand around his wrist and shoots him the filthiest glare she can muster. “I’m getting my food out of your car so my family- my _beloved_ family who I would _die_ for, who I am here to _provide_ for- can eat. If you so much as _pull_ on me while I’m taking this stuff inside I swear to god, McGucket-”

“Ma’am, I-I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” he yelps, and she squeezes his arm menacingly, making the worst face she can think of, and he cringes again. He doesn’t actually misbehave again, though, even when she nearly overbalances trying to navigate back to the path she’d made through the snow this morning.

She’s shivering and- if she’s honest- hyperventilating slightly when she finally gets the door open and pulls him inside.

“Don’t come downstairs,” she calls out. “Trust me, do not come downstairs, honey!” The baby starts wailing at the sudden noise, and Ripley freezes, her grip tightening around Fiddleford’s wrist.

“Hello to you, too,” Stan calls from the bedroom.

She stares at Fiddleford for a few moments, her entire world crystallizing around _he had a gun_ and _he knows about the baby_ and _what if what if what if-?_ She bares her teeth slightly, dragging him along as she puts the bag on the table, and then hustling him into the living room with the long couch and the stained glass window.

“Ma’am- please, this- this is all a misunderstandin’,” he pleads, and she slams the door, looking around the room. “I weren’t gonna hurt ya, you don’t _know_ what that was, it wasn’t-”

“Shut up,” she snarls, her ears ringing. She lets go of him, wishing she had something to occupy her hands with. “Alright, McGucket. You don’t know anything about me ‘cept I’m connected to Stanford, so what’s your fuckin’ issue with Ford? You- you-”

He puts his hands up. He’s being too- too something, Ripley doesn’t know what, but she can’t think straight, can barely breathe, even inside and away from the cold air that had made it so hard outside.

“Ya’ll don’t have the heat on,” he says quietly, and she jumps slightly, blinking. “There’s a baby in this house and ya’ll don’t-”

“Shut up,” she says, her voice shaking. She puts her hands on her face, her back solidly against the door.

“Ma’am, I-”

“Shut up before I decide the best way to protect us from you involves a burial,” she snaps, and he puts his hands up again.

“I-I’m sorry I scared ya,” he says quietly. “I realize now how that must’ve looked.”

“You pulled a fucking _gun_ on me,” she snarls, “I should have cut your fucking _hand_ off, and now I- now you-”

“It’s not a gun, it’s _not_ a gun, it-” he quails under her glare, “I-I know I didn’t r-really consider the d-design flaw in designin’ it t-to _look_ like a gun b-b-but under the circumstances-”

“Yeah, it wa’n’t no fuckin’ toy either,” she snaps.

“It- it’s somethin’ I invented, ma’am, to help people, it’s helped me, it’ll help people here, it’ll- it’ll help _you_ ,” he pleads. “It erases the bad stuff. It’s just- it’s somethin’ that takes away the things that haunt us, the things we can’t live with or deal with, it don’t hurt none, and gettin’ you safely away from this place, from him, it’s the right thing, ma’am, it’s the right thing for yer baby, it-”

“Shut up,” she says again, blinking. For a moment it… it doesn’t actually sound like an awful idea, when she thinks about the shit she’s seen over the past year, hell, over the past two months-

-and then it hits her what he’s saying it does.

“You were trying to erase my memory,” she says flatly, and he gives her a sickeningly hopeful smile under all the blood and dirt.

“It’s painless- it’s harmless- I’ve done it on myself and it’s worked wonders, ma’am, please- this man is a nightmare, this _place_ is a nightmare, you-”

“You were gonna erase Stanford,” she says dully, and something in her voice makes him stop smiling. “You were gonna erase the last ten years of my life? You were gonna erase the only person who-” Her throat closes and she almost starts crying, because she’s thinking about what the last decade would have been if not for him, even though she knows it didn’t happen it’s terrifying her that it might have, that _somewhere_ in the multiverse it _did_ happen, because it’s already happened once to her and what kind of person can she even _be_ if she loses everything every twenty years?

“I don’t _have_ anywhere else, you f-fuckin’-” she says hoarsely, and he takes a step back. “Where was I gonna go _next_ , huh? Y-you- you weren’t gonna drive me into the next town and give me a new life, were you? What about Stan and the baby, what happens to _them_ if you- if you-”

Ripley realizes that she’s… probably not doing well in the Intimidation/Interrogation department. He moves and it’s too much- she snatches his hand out of the air, staring at it like she expected it to be holding a knife.

“And to think he actually misses you,” she marvels, and he raises his other hand in a placating motion.

“Ma’am, it’s not safe here,” he says cajolingly. “You know what kinda mess Stanford’s makin’, you know what he’s doin’, you gotta know it’s not safe for you and yer little one to be here with him-”

“You see this wrist, McGucket?” Ripley asks softly, shaking his arm. “It’s about to be broken if you don’t tell me where to find Crash Site Omega.”

“The- what?” he asks helplessly, and she shakes his arm again.

“The spaceship, McGucket, the alien space ship! I need to get in there, I need to get parts so I can save him, you fucking- just- just fucking tell me where it is!” she snaps.

“I can’t, I c-can’t, ma’am, it’s gone, I got- I got rid of that, I got rid of all that,” he says desperately, knocking his free hand’s knuckles on his forehead. “It’s gone, I-I… I couldn’t sleep thinkin’ about- about what…”

Ripley stares at him, her mental processes grinding to a halt.

“Miss Pines, why doesn’t- why don’t you just get Ford to take you there?” he asks, and she shudders bodily.

“Ford’s… Ford can’t,” she says miserably, letting go of him. “Oh, god, what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do, he’s…” She trails off, looking down at her hands.

“McGucket,” she says quietly, not looking up. “Get… get in the bathroom.”

“Wh-why?” he squeaks, and she sighs.

“That’s where we left the first aid kit,” she mutters, stepping forward and gently shoving him toward the en-suite. She’s not gentle as she cleans his face, disinfecting the cut on his forehead and dabbing a little of the antibiotic ointment on it. She tries to pretend she doesn’t see the way his eyes track her as she moves; to be completely honest she’s not even sure what she’s going to do next.

She moves to step away and he grabs the sleeve of her sweater.

“Yer nose is bleedin’, Miss Pines,” he says shyly, and she wipes her sleeve on her face and winces at the sharp pain in her nose and the smear of red on Ford’s sweater.

“Think ya broke it,” she mutters, pressing her fingertips against the sides of her nose until something clicks into place with a painful little crunch. He winces, and she glances up at the mirror to see how bad it looks.

Her mouth is red. The entire lower half of her face- _no_ \- is covered in bright red blood- _peeled off raw_ \- keep it the fuck together- _Hyde and Sanchez never came back for her, they never stopped her, she_ \- no-

“Ma’am?” McGucket asks timidly, and the spell is broken, and she cups a handful of water and washes the blood off.

“I-” she starts, then stops, frowning at him. “...Stan needs to weigh in on this. Shit.”

“Stanford?” McGucket echoes, sounding confused, and she grabs his wrist again, pulling him out into the hallway. She hesitates at the foot of the stairs, looking apprehensively at McGucket again.

“Stan?” she calls upstairs, trying to keep her voice slightly softer than before but somewhat unsuccessful at it. “Stan, I need your opinion on what we are gonna do. We have a hostage situation?”

“We what?” Stan calls from their room, and she sighs. McGucket looks perplexed, like he’s not sure what exactly he’s listening to, head cocked to one side.

“Ford’s old friend- the one I told you about- tried to pull a stunt and, uh, now he’s here in our custody?” she tries. There’s a moment of silence, and then a soft stream of steady cursing and the creaking of the floorboards as Stan moves around a bit, before he moves to the top of the stairs, baby wrapped tightly and snugged up against his chest in a couple of Ford’s shirts tied together at Stan’s neck.

“Can you explain that again, but in English?” he asks tiredly, before frowning at McGucket, curling one arm around the baby. “What happened to your faces?”

“A terrible misunderstanding,” McGucket says quickly, and Ripley scowls at him.

“He pulled a gun on me so I reacted,” she says, and Stan’s face darkens.

“Not a gun. Not a gun. It just looked like a gun, which- which was a mistake, an’ I’m sorry,” McGucket adds, and Ripley frowns.

“He could help us,” she says flatly, “but I don’t know how much, because he says he erased his own memories? And he tried to erase mine?”

“He didn’t, though, right?” Stan asks, and she shakes her head.

“He might be able to help us find Ford but I don’t know. I don’t think we should kill him but I- it’s your baby, Stan, whatever you think is gonna protect her best is what I’m gonna do,” she says softly.

“For shit’s sake, Ripley, you can’t just go around killing people,” Stan says weakly, but she notes the way his arms tighten around the bundle at his chest, and McGucket clears his throat.

“Look- clearly- clearly we’re off on the wrong foot- I didn’t mean to scare ya and I can’t apologize enough,” he says shakily. “B-but- this ain’t no place for a child, and ya’ll know what Stanford’s doin’- I d-don’t know why he won’t let ya turn the heater on but lissen, I can get y'all outta here, just-”

“What?” Stan asks blankly, and Ripley sighs.

“Ford’s gone, McGucket. He’s not… he’s not doing whatever it is you’re scared of anymore, McGucket, because he’s gone, and we need your help to get him back and you’re… just… making life difficult,” she mutters. “Leave us alone, McGucket, alright? The demon shit is over, the world ending shit is over, just… don’t fuckin’ try to shoot me again and I won’t bust your face again.”

She lets go of him and tosses his keys at his chest; he catches them, blinking owlishly at the two of them before he clears his throat again.

“Wh-why don’t I show you where the heater is and see if we can get the heat on,” he says timidly. “It ain’t good for the baby, they can’t- they can’t regulate their temperatures the way a big person can, a-and-”

“Uh,” Ripley says, glancing over at Stan, and he shrugs.

“Guy’s obsessed with the heater, let him fix the heater,” he says wearily.

“I’m making dinner later,” Ripley says, and Stan shrugs and starts shuffling back to the room.

McGucket leads her to a closet just under the stairs, with pipes leading to different rooms, and he quietly explains what radiators are when Ripley frowns at them, even though she’s fairly certain she already knows what radiators do, at least in theory.

He flips a switch and things start gurgling and rumbling.

“It does that when it’s been a while,” he tells her softly. “That’s- that’s Stanley, right? With the baby?”

“Ford mentioned him before?” Ripley asks, and he nods absently.

“Stanford didn’t talk much about him, ‘cepting when he’d been on the drink-” She snorts in agreement. “-but he’d mentioned that he, uh, that he had a brother who was like me.”

“Had- oh,” Ripley says, scratching her neck. “Yeah. Well. You see our predicament here- I’m, uh… I’m not from here, I can’t drive or nothin’, and Stan’s indisposed, so… it’s been rough, yeah.”

“I remember how rough it was with my Tate,” McGucket says fondly.

“Oh, you mean you didn’t choose to erase _that_ memory, huh?” she says, not quite a snarl, and he goes quiet for a while.

“Stanford has a ten year warranty on this, so you have three and a half, four years before you probably need to get it looked at,” he says, and Ripley looks at it, feeling awfully helpless for someone who’s killed a god with her own two hands.

“Get it looked at,” she echoes. “Right. That’s- that’s something Stan knows how to do, right? That’s a normal human Earth thing people do, so-”

“Excuse me?” he splutters, and she blinks at him. “Wh-what exactly a-are you, again?”

“Have we officially met?” she asks. “Hi. I’m Ripley, Ford’s wife from space. Ford got sucked into space and time travel was involved so I’m here now. I’m from Atlanta originally. Also I lost all my memories and I’m a space duellist.”

“Uh-”

She slaps a companionable hand on his upper arm and squeezes, smiling grimly. “And you’re Fiddleford McGucket, the man who tried to take away the only thing I have left, so, uh, you’ll excuse me if I don’t invite you to dinner.”

He frowns, looking down.

“I can’t drive without my glasses,” he says, and then, carefully, “ya didn’t happen to pick up the pieces when you broke’m, didja?”

“Um,” Ripley says, drawing her hand back. “I-I can- I can look for them, I guess-”

“Supposin’-” he starts, looking distantly at the heater. “You know what, I’m sure- I’m sure I can find’em myself.”

“Oh,” Ripley says, swallowing. “Okay. Okay. Well. Um. Thanks for fixing the heater but uh, un-thanks for scaring me and breaking my nose?”

“Yer welcome,” he says, smiling wanly, “and, uh, un-yer-welcome for, uh, bustin’ my glasses and threatenin’ to break my arm?”

They stare at each other for a few minutes, before she turns quickly away, stifling an exhausted, hysterical giggle.

“Y-yeah, okay,” she breathes out. “Look, I’m sorry, man, alright, I- I’m used to people trying to kill me and it didn’t- I didn’t know what else to do, I’m sorry.”

“S’alright,” he says, dusting his hands off. “Welp. I’ll, uh… I’ll let you get to it, Miss Pines. I-” He hesitates, before adding, “I _am_ sorry about- about Stanford, uh, bein’ missing.”

“Oh, uh… sure,” she says slowly.

“I’ll see myself out,” he tells her, shutting the closet door. “You know how to turn this thing off when the weather gets better?”

“Uh? Oh, yeah, yeah, I- yeah,” she says distractedly, and he nods. She doesn’t follow him out, heading instead to the kitchen, and after a few moments starts putting her groceries away.

She spots the gun lying next to her carton of eggs, and after a few tense seconds admits to herself that on closer inspection it looks- well, it looks like it was made out of trash if she’s going to be honest- but it also looks awfully familiar. She puts it in the back of the freezer, behind the ice trays, and decides to deal with it later.

She peeks out the window and McGucket’s car is still there, and if she squints she can see him sitting at the wheel, a dark and somewhat indistinct shape.

“Stan?” she calls out. “Do you want scrambled eggs?”

“What?” he calls back. “You got eggs?”

“Yeah, you want any?”

He makes a noise that she’s going to take as a yes. She puts a dab of butter in a clean pan, the way Drew showed her, and scrambles a couple of eggs, putting them on a plate in a single solid lump of yellow and carrying it up to Stan still-hot.

“Hey,” she says, performing a complicated juggle as Stan exchanges his baby for her eggs. She strokes the kid’s back a few times, letting her settle as Stan eats.

“S’good,” he says, even though she’s sure they’re a little runny.

“I got a job at that little diner,” she tells him. “Just for the day, helpin’ out, but they gave me fifteen bucks and all this stuff to make eggs and pancakes. I-I know it’s not- it’s not everything we needed, but that buys us a couple of days before I gotta go out again and it’s nice, right, it’s nice to have something different, so-”

“It’s great,” he tells her, and gives her a pained, mechanical smile. “Better than the last eggs I had.”

“And he fixed the heater,” she adds, and he nods. She pats the baby’s back a little, and he eats in silence as she paces, cuddling the baby close and making little nonsense noises into her skull.

“You gonna eat?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“They fed me at the, the place,” she tells him, and he nods.

There’s a knock at the door, and she pauses, frowning.

“Probably McGucket,” she says, and Stan puts the plate down on the bed and takes the baby back. “I’ll go… see what he wants.”

Sure enough, he’s at the door, smiling and visibly frazzled. “Hey, so-” he starts, and she raises both eyebrows at him. “So- did I, uh, did I leave anything here, or-”

“I-” she starts, patting theatrically at her pockets. “No, I gave you your keys back, didn’t I?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” he says desperately, giving his keys a little shake. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, pretending to think.

“Hmm. Gosh, no, I don’t recall you havin’ anything else, after that whole, uh, bloody violent chase through the woods you led me on, it was mostly just Lefty and Righty,” she says, showing him her fists. “I put your keys in my pocket so they’d be safe, since I was scared if they fell in the snow they’d be like, lost for a month, so-”

“Oh, okay, thank- thank you, ma’am, for, uh-” he trails off, running a shaking hand over his hair. “S-say, I- I still feel bad about, uh, about- all that,” he says, eyes darting around as he, she guesses, scans the entryway for signs of his memory erasing gun.

“Oh, don’t,” she says, leaning on the doorframe. “Look, it’s… no harm, no foul, right? Just don’t come after me or Stan again, we’re having a hard enough time as it is with, you know, the day to day, raising a baby on our own with no, like, resources or help or family or people who know what to do when babies do the thing-”

“Say, uh, is there- is there anything you folks need?” he interrupts, and she blinks innocently at him.

“Well- now that you mention it, McGucket, we ran out of shampoo and laundry soap a month ago and we’re on our last dregs of dish soap, but I just had a dickens of a time walking to the diner today so I’m not sure if I’m gonna be good to walk to the nearest convenience store or-”

“Tell ya what,” he says, his face shiny with sweat despite the cold. “Why don’t- why don’t I drive down to the store downtown and grab a few things? Bet the two of you could use some more diapers for the little’un, right?”

“Wow, you don’t have to do all that, McGucket,” she clucks, and he shakes his head.

“No, no, I- I insist, ma’am. It’s- it’s the very least I could do,” he says softly, and she runs a hand over her hair.

“Well- okay, I’m not- I’m not gonna turn away help, not with Stan and the kiddo on the line,” she says grudgingly, swallowing. “Thanks. That’s… we appreciate the offer.” She does her best “swallowing her pride to accept charity” shuffle, not meeting his eyes.

“Okay? Okay. So… I’ll… I’ll be back today, how about that, and- and yeah. I’ll see you in a bit, ma’am,” he says nervously, and she nods and waves him off. She waits until she sees him stuff himself back into his car before she shuts the front door.

“Sucker,” she mutters under her breath, snorting a little. She takes the gun out of the freezer, contemplates putting it somewhere she can reach it easily, contemplates destroying it, taking it apart out of spite.

_i got rid of that, i got rid of all that_

She wraps it in a dry dish towel and eyes the kitchen cabinets speculatively, before stuffing it into the very back of the highest shelf in the cabinets over the sink and artfully sticking some of the kitchen tools she doesn’t know how to use in front of it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It’s dark outside and she and Stan have already eaten when there’s another knock on the door. She’s not even wearing a sweater- it’s warm enough that she’s just wearing a t-shirt and the pants she was wearing outside- and the cold from outside hits her like a punch in the face after such a short amount of time in warmth and comfort.

“Uh, h-howdy,” McGucket says hopefully, and she blinks at the bags in his hands before letting him in. They turn out to contain bottles of shampoo and dish soap and a weird liquid laundry soap (McGucket sees her face and tells her it’s the kind he’d used when he was staying here, he can show her how to use it) and a 12-pack of infant-sized diapers.

“Oh,” she says, surprised. “You- you came back. I, uh… hi.”

“Hi,” he says gently. She feels momentarily adrift, confused by the way he starts smiling and nervously chattering to her about how he uses this type of shampoo himself and this laundry soap’s supposed to be good for sensitive baby skin (Ripley is startled and unhappy to find out that this is a thing) and it takes a near superhuman amount of willpower to remind herself that he’s probably just angling to try to get his hands on the memory gun he left over here.

It takes a little bit for McGucket to explain how to use the liquid detergent, and it ends up being too dark and snowy to drive back (he claims, Ripley doesn’t know) and Ripley gives him a blanket and fidgets at the entrance to the living room as he curls up on the couch.

“You uh- you know where everything is if you need anything,” she mumbles, before bravely running away upstairs.

She paces the bedroom for a while, only climbing into bed with Stan and the baby after she puts Sparky on the nightstand, reaching out periodically to make sure she can reach it.

“Are you really scared of that little guy?” Stan asks softly, and she makes a small sound and touches her forehead to his.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. She rubs her thumb on the back of the baby’s fist. “He has it out for Ford, but he- maybe he’s harmless. He didn’t have to help us, either, but maybe- maybe there’s something he wants. I don’t know, Stan.”

“He has kids?” Stan asks thoughtfully. “People with kids are probably not gonna be ready to screw somebody with a baby over.”

“Maybe,” Ripley says, not meeting his eyes. “I saw a lot of fucked up stuff over the years, though.”

“Yeah, uh… yeah, I guess I have, too,” Stan says quietly.

Ripley doesn’t know how she gets to sleep, but she must eventually, because there’s thin gray light coming in through the window when she wakes up.

She changes a diaper and moves the wiggling lump of human child over to Stan, and when she stumbles downstairs McGucket’s already up, folding the blanket onto the couch and giving Ripley a startled smile.

“I-I won’t intrude on yer privacy any more’n I have to,” he says, and she nods numbly. He fidgets, glancing away. “A-and I’m stayin’ at a motel near the road to the Interstate, so, if, uh, if ya need anything-”

“Ford-” she starts, looking down. “Ford was… McGucket, just so- just so you know- Ford _was_ sorry he didn’t listen. He told me he was sorry he didn’t respect you.” She clears her throat. “He went through the portal- like you did- and there, uh… there wasn’t any way to bring him back the way you got brought back. And he was on the, uh, the other side, for five years before I met him.”

McGucket is silent, eyes round in his pale face.

“That was eight years ago,” she says quietly. “I know… I know it doesn’t make sense, I know it doesn’t feel like it makes sense that no time at all has passed here but thirteen have passed for him-”

“Ma’am, I’ve read my Arthur C. Clarke, I know that time dilation’s a theoretical type thing,” he says, looking dazed. She nods uncomfortably.

“Well… just… I do get it, why you’d be… pissed. Granted, not why you’d try to take his family away and abandon him to whatever it is you’re scared’a, but I get why you’d be pissed. Just, uh… please don’t hold it against me or Stan, okay?”

“I won’t,” he says softly. “I don’t.”

“Okay. Good. Because we’re trying to get Ford back,” she says, and he flinches a little. “You can still be mad at him, McGucket, but, uh… he’s spent thirteen years payin’ for it. Please… please.”

They’re quiet for a few more seconds that feel like longer, Ripley’s body aching as she stands there.

“So… so he’s gonna be an old man if we get him back now?” he asks suddenly.

“He’s not even forty-five, that’s not exactly old,” she points out, and he utters a high, thin little laugh.

“I reckon not,” he admits. She watches him drive away from the open front door, and wonders how much longer it’s going to take to get Ford back without McGucket’s help now.


	5. my heart will lead me there soon

It takes almost a week before Stan and Ripley honestly get sick of eggs for dinner. In that time Ripley feels like she’s mastered the art of cooking scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, “omelettes” made with what’s left of the cheese after she cuts off the moldy bits, and sandwiches consisting of buttered toast and fried-hard eggs. She’s definitely mastered the art of medium-sized and small-sized circular pancakes, although her attempts to make heart-shaped and mickey mouse shaped pancakes have not ended well. She’s also starting to get pretty sick of pancakes for breakfast, too.

The snow, at least, is mostly starting to shrink up. It’s possibly less cold, although Ripley can’t tell, it looks like hell outside to her eyes. 

The kid is sweet- nice to look at, nice to hold, nice to sing to and talk to and carry around whenever Stan’s exhausted and touched-out and needs a mental and physical break. Ripley likes to pretend-nibble on her nose and feet and hands, likes reading with the weight of her on her chest, likes watching Stan with her, likes sleeping next to them both. It’s enough to make her wish, for the first time, that she and Ford could have done this, could have had this.

No point in telling Stan about it, though. She’s pretty sure that’ll only make him feel worse.

She and Stan start walking the baby around the house a little more, mostly because they get to where neither of them can stand the inside of Ford’s bedroom anymore. McGucket comes by again, with a jug of milk and a bottle of orange juice and a twitchy, manic smile that stays plastered on as he visibly glances around the room. Ripley pours him a glass of water from the tap and gives Stan a glass of milk and watches, mildly horrified, as they both guzzle their glasses down like desperate men.

She is burping the baby and rocking her side to side in a sort of jiggling dance when McGucket gives them a smile that almost looks genuine, and asks if there’s anything the baby needs.

“Dunno,” she says, shrugging and nuzzling the baby’s fluff a little. The baby makes a series of little noises and she stops, already recognizing the sounds she makes when she doesn’t like something.

“Forgive me for havin’ to ask- I just plain clear seem to have forgotten,” he adds apologetically, “but what did ya’ll say the baby’s name is again?”

Ripley pauses, looking blankly at McGucket, before looking over at Stan. Stan’s face is blank, and she mentally takes stock of the last couple of weeks, trying to figure out if anything resembling a real name has been used.

“Explo-”

“Toiba,” Stan says quickly, and Ripley blinks at him, then grins at the baby.

“Toiba Explosion Pines,” she coos, and Stan laughs weakly.

“You know what, yeah, why not,” he says, and McGucket grins nervously.

“I-I take it there was- uh- some debate?” he asks.

“Um, yeah, definitely,” Stan says, and Ripley waggles her eyebrows at him.

Before he leaves he asks if he can hold her, and after a few minutes of significant silence Stan shakes his head slowly and takes her back from Ripley’s arms. 

“Sure, sure, ya’ll don’t know what germs I’m carryin’,” McGucket says quickly, hands raised slightly. 

Ripley, against her better judgement, sort of feels bad for him.

“How, uh, how’s Tate and Missus McGucket doin’?” she asks, and the stricken look on his face before he mumbles an excuse to leave makes her feel even worse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

“I will find you!” Ford snaps, the freshly deactivated portal sword searing the skin between Ripley’s breasts with a sick odor of burnt bacon. There is a crackle of energy around and behind her, a moment of furious shock as he presses his hand flat across the top of her chest to shove her through, and an instant of weightlessness followed by a sucking sensation of sudden gravity.

“Fucking-” she snarls, wrapping her hands around his arm, pulling herself back to him-

The portal stutters and she hangs within it, clothes and hair lifting around her, and his eyes widen as the gravitational pull starts to slowly draw his glasses away. 

“Ripley!” he screams, horrified. “Ripley, stop!”

“Don’t leave me again!” she cries out, and he frantically bats at her hands, trying to dislodge her.

“Ripley, stop, you have to-” he pleads, and rough, graying hands with the skin sloughing off the bony fingers close around his throat, silencing him. There is a gush of bright, lipstick red, arcing high out of his neck where teeth are now buried. His arm goes slack in her grip; his eyes widen with terror and pain, his mouth moving soundlessly as darker blood gurgles up and spills through his lips. She screams and tries to pull him towards her, but she’s just not strong enough, no match for the horde of the undead tearing into him.

It’s far too long before his eyes start to lose focus, start to drift upwards, unseeing. 

The portal starts to close around her with the snapping of a rubber band wound too tight-

“-Ford!” Ripley cries out, sitting up suddenly, lost. It’s dark. She can’t see anything and it’s dark and it had been quiet but now there’s something keening loudly next to her. 

She puts her head in her hands  _ Ford’s dead Ford’s dead  _ and the sound next to her intensifies to wailing.

“Stop, Ripley-” someone ( _ Ford? _ ) says sleepily next to her, and she breathes out a soft, shuddering sigh before she realizes no, no, that’s Stan, and if that’s Stan then the little noisemaker making her feelings known at Ripley’s side is Toiba Explosion Pines.

~~ Ford’s dead. She saw him die. ~~

Ripley knows that wasn’t what happened, she  _ knows  _ that wasn’t what happened and yet- and yet just a few moments of doubt, unsure of which version of their parting was real and which wasn’t-

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, pulling herself out of bed. “I’m sorry, I’m-” 

Stan says something, but the words don’t make it through her ears into her head. The baby is quieting down slightly, bundled into his arms, and Ripley can’t stop thinking about Ford’s skin pulling apart like bloody rubber in the rotting hands of the zombies.

She makes it to the bathroom before she throws up, the sink creaking ominously as her entire weight sags against it. She does not, however, make it to the toilet. The sun’s up and shining through the bedroom window by the time she comes back from cleaning up, Stan’s eyes trained warily on her.

“You good?” he asks.

“Don’t feel good,” she says shortly, changing into a set of work clothes and tugging one of Ford’s many (now, stretched-out and misshapen) sweaters over her head. “Gonna work downstairs today. I’ll bring you breakfast first.”

She can’t even think of eating; she brings Stan a plate with two pancakes and a scrambled egg. He tries to smile at her when he notices she drew the syrup into an S shape, and she makes a weak face that she hopes is a smile in return.

Her mind is elsewhere; her mind is everywhere. It takes a solid second-and-a-half for her to realize, halfway down the steps to the elevator to the downstairs lab, that her foot is coming forward and meeting only empty space. She lurches, there is a crunch in her right ankle that makes her want to throw up again, and then she is very suddenly at the bottom of the stairs. She tries to pull herself to her feet and cannot, slumping back onto the steps and gazing blankly at the ceiling overhead.

“Fuck,” she mumbles, and for a while- few seconds probably, but it sure does feel like longer- that’s the entirety of her world. 

Fuck.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The knocking downstairs is insistent; Stan realizes with a springing dread that Ripley must not be able to hear the front door from where she is in the basement. He slings Toiba up against his chest and gingerly makes his way down the stairs and towards the front door- the closer he gets, the more he can hear McGucket’s voice, although it’s hard to make out exactly what it is the man’s saying.

He manages to get to the door and swings it open, and McGucket stops, looking frantic. 

“You’re alright!” he says, shaking. “Th-thank goodness. I’ve been beatin’ on this’ere door for nigh on to twenty minutes, f-friend!”

“Yeah, I was upstairs, and Ripley’s in the basement, so she probably can’t hear it,” Stan says coolly, giving the man a onceover. He looks kinda terrible- Stan really isn’t one to talk, obviously, but he’s pale and twitchy and covered in stubble, his right arm in a sling and a couple of bandages on his face. Stan can see the front bumper of McGucket’s car from here, and it looks all banged up. “You, uh, are you okay?”

“I g-got in another car accident today,” he says glumly, looking down. “I-I wanted to- I wanted to check in with ya’ll before I-” He cuts himself off, shaking. “Th-that’s not important. I, uh, I really need to talk to Ripley before I go, though, can- can ya get her?”

“Well, uh, okay. You wanna come in while I get her?” Stan asks, absentmindedly rubbing circles onto the warm bundle of tiny human clutched up against him.

“Uh, y-yessir, please,” McGucket says timorously. Stan lets him in, shutting the front door. “S-so you said she’s- she’s downstairs?”

“Yeah, uh, working on that… portal thing, you know,” Stan says, and McGucket turns a sickly gray-green.

“I-I-I don’t- I don’t recall-” he says, sweating a little. Stan sighs and gently shoves him towards the couch.

“Siddown while I get her.” 

Stan opens the door to the stairwell and he knows something’s wrong before his eyes adjust to the gloom. He takes a couple of cautious steps, one hand on the wall, before he realizes that the lumpy obstruction halfway down the stairs is, in fact, the woman he came to find. A thousand images leap to mind- a purple bulging neck bent in entirely the wrong direction, a bloody gash leaking fluid and brain tissue, a face ice-cold and stiff and staring blindly into space- and he makes a small, panicked noise in his throat.

“Ripley,” he says, his voice strangled, before he tries again, the baby stirring against him. “Ripley!”

“Mmuhh,” she grunts, sitting up, and he clutches at his chest at the sight of her moving. “Stan? Wha’re you doin’ here?”

“What am  **_I_ ** doing here? What the fuck are  _ you _ doing here?” he snaps, and the baby squirms and makes an unhappy squeaky infant noise at him.

“I fell down the stairs,” she tells him, rubbing her jaw. “Fucked my ankle. Tried climbing back up but it hurt too bad so I went to sleep.”

“You went to sleep because your ankle hurt,” he repeats slowly.

“Yeah, you know. When you’re hurt and it hurts too bad to do anything and you can’t stop it hurting so you go to sleep,” she says slowly, like that’s a common thing people normally do.

“How- okay,” he sighs, jiggling Toiba a little. “How long have you been down here with your ankle all fucked?”

“What time is it now?” she asks blearily.

“About one-ish. McGucket’s here,” Stan adds, and she groans.

“About five hours, then, I guess,” she says, and he winces.

“You fell on your way  _ down _ to the basement?” he asks, and she nods glumly.

“Poor Aunt Ripley,” he says sympathetically, giving the baby’s back a pat. “Let me see if I can get McGucket to come help you up the stairs, wait here.”

“Will do,” she mumbles, leaning back down until her head’s resting on the steps again.

McGucket’s staring grimly down at the rug, rocking gently on the edge of the couch, when Stan gets back.

“Hey, uh, Fiddle- uh- Fidds,” Stan says, his mind blanking for a moment as the man’s name escapes him. “How good at heavy lifting are you?”

“Uh, not- not the best, why?” McGucket asks, and Stan motions him over.

“Ripley needs a hand,” Stan informs him, and McGucket winces.

“Uh, y-yeah, I’m really not comfortable with, uh, with doin’ any of that… ungodly portal science nonsense Ford’d got hisself into, I can’t really be a party to-”

“Oh, uh, no, it’s not science shit, she fell down the stairs and can’t get back up,” Stan corrects, and McGucket jumps unsteadily to his feet.

“Sweet  _ Sally _ , why didn’t you lead with  _ that _ part?” he asks, running his free hand over his thinning hair. It takes some doing- between Fiddleford with his bad arm and Stan with a protesting baby on his chest, they just about add up to one competent adult assisting Ripley upstairs and onto the couch. 

“You guys could do worse than to give a gal a stiff double,” she says weakly, rubbing her palm over her mouth. “I’d settle for one of those teeny little airplane bottles of liquor even, you know the kind?”

“No, not really,” Stan says, patting her head. She groans and puts her head back.

“Rude. S-so rude.”

“I’m almost positive yer not supposed to be drinkin’,” Fiddleford says, running his fingertips over the back of her skull. “Ya got dinged on yer noggin when you fell.”

“I’ve got a couple of those painkillers left,” Stan suggests, and she frowns, wincing.

“It’s- I don’t-” Ripley’s attempts at speaking dissolve into frustrated, wordless muttering. She flaps a hand out and crosses her arms over herself, scowling at her leg like it’s personally offending her.

“You don’t want’em?” Stan asks, and she shrugs.

“Ya do want’em but you don’t wanna ask for’em?” Fiddleford asks gently.

She sniffs angrily and shrugs. Fiddleford sighs, glancing over at Stan.

“I know ya’ll are… not gonna be predisposed to this idea, but we should probably get’er in t’see a doctor, if this thing’s broken-”

“No,” Ripley interrupts, huffing. “Fuck’s sakes, I don’t need a doctor, even if it is broken. I just- I just need something to take the edge off until it’s good enough to walk on, jeez.”

“Um, I ain’t exactly agreein’ with Captain Doctors-Are-For-The-Weak over here, but we don’t… got the funds to go to a doctor,” Stan admits, rubbing the back of his head. “Between the two of us we have, uh… fifteen dollars. And that’s because Ripley went to work at that diner that one time.”

“And  _ you’re _ not payin’ for me to go to some fucking doctor just to be told I gotta wrap my ankle and keep off it,” Ripley adds with a pained snarl. “It’s bullshit. Just grab me a stick to crutch around on and we’ll be good.”

“Ma’am- please, even if it isn’t broken, ya really need to speak to a medical professional ‘bout that ankle,” Fiddleford says cajolingly, and Stan bites back the urge to react to what her face does when he calls her Ma’am.

“No, okay, the answer is no. I’ve never once been to a doctor if it wasn’t literally a life or death situation, and I ain’t about to start now.”

Fiddleford sighs heavily, gazing up at the ceiling for a moment.

“Well, I can certainly see where you an’ yer husband have a lot in common,” he mutters under his breath.

“So maybe you can hit the store for me and grab me an ace bandage and a bottle of whatever non-beer alcohol they sell in the fucking early eighties,” Ripley suggests thinly, drumming her fingers on her left knee.

“Seriously?” Fiddleford asks, and she gives him a nervous look, the kind Stan’s only seen her make when she doesn’t realize he can see her face.

“No, haha, of course not seriously,” she says, her voice bright and brittle. “Look, man, I don’t really need an ace bandage, I’ve got plenty of supplies I can turn into a wrap for my bum ankle. This ain’t my first “broke something and gotta take care of it myself” rodeo, pal-”

Stan and Fiddleford exchange glances; Fiddleford's right eyebrow is practically up into his hairline. Stan’s… sort of relieved that Fidds is making that face, that someone other than him is apparently willing to die on that particular hill with Ripley.

“-second of all- don’t think I don’t see you both making that fuckin’ face, like I don’t know how to take care of myself- second of all I don’t actually need anything for the pain, that- that was a joke,” Ripley protests, sighing. “Look, I’ll be fine. I don’t usually have painkillers when I get hurt, either. Just- I dunno, it’s gonna be rough for Stan the next couple of days until I’m feeling better.”

“Oh, it’s gonna be rough for  _ me _ , huh,” Stan says, bristling slightly at the heavy implication.

“Oh, yeah, you  _ definitely _ don’t need help, my bad,” Ripley snaps, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Alright, you two, that’s enough,” Fiddleford says, flinching slightly when they both turn to look at him but recovering nicely. “I didn’t wanna hafta do this, but ya’ll leave me no choice.” He runs a hand over his face, sighing.

“I’m callin’ in backup.” With that, he stomps softly out of the room and into the kitchen.

“What do you think he means by that?” Ripley asks in a low voice.

“Why the fuck would I-” Stan starts, and Fiddleford pops back in, blushing slightly.

“Do either’a you mind if I use your phone for a long distance call?”

“Our phone still works?” Ripley asks hopefully, and Fiddleford bites his lower lip.

“I’m gonna have to go down to the store and use their payphone,” he concludes. “Uh- d’you two need anything while I’m out?”

“Stan, why don’t you grab the money and head to the store with him?” Ripley asks, putting her head back. “Maybe you two being out of the house, I’ll grab a nap.”

“Yeah, and maybe you won’t be such a grumpy ass,” Stan suggests mildly. It’s worrying that instead of biting back she just shrugs and waves him away. “Should I bring the baby with me or leave her with you?”

“Whatever you wanna do,” Ripley murmurs. Stan and Fiddleford exchange another look.

“I’m takin’ her with if Fidds doesn’t mind,” he says, and she shrugs again. Fiddleford clears his throat.

“Yanno what, I bet Stanford’s old hiking stick is around here somewhere, you could use that for a crutch if you gotta use the bathroom before we get home,” he offers, gesturing at the closet. Ripley stares pointedly at him until he gets the hint and roots around in the closet for her, clearing his throat a little once he emerges with the walking stick in hand. “Y’all, uh. I see y’all cleaned up in a hurry, huh?”

“Unless the next words out of your mouth are an offer to organize and catalogue all of Ford’s shit so we know what we want when we’re lookin’ for it, I’m gonna guess you’ve got nothin’ else to say,” Ripley says, and he hands her the walking stick. “Thanks. So, uh, how- how far away is the store, how, um, how long are you three gonna be out?”

“An hour at the most, it’s a fifteen minute drive,” Fiddleford promises. She considers this.

“Gonna nap.”

“You do that. Bye, Aunt Ripley,” Stan says, waggling one of Toiba’s fat little arms at her to make her smile. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

A noise from another room wakes Ripley from a sleep that can’t be nearly as delicious as she thinks it was. 

“Stan?” she croaks, sitting up when she receives no response. There’s another jostling noise and she huffs a sigh, pulling herself upright and manhandling the walking stick into place so she can hobble over. 

She hears the hisses and gasps before she realizes that there’s actually a lot of people in the other room. She stares, a disheveled wreck crutching around on one foot, and is horrified to realize there’s got to be at least a dozen people in her house who she does not recognize in the slightest, and one Susan from Greasy’s, who she does recognize.

“And here we have Sleeping Beauty, folks!” Stan says loudly, an arm around Ford’s model skeleton. It’s wearing the goofy pink flamingo shirt and palm-tree sunglasses she and Stan had assumed belonged to Ford at one point. Toiba’s nestled into the front of his jacket, silently judging all of this.  “Ahaha, but seriously, folks, I think we woke Mommy up with the tour, sorry about that, Mom.”

“Mommy,” Ripley repeats thinly, and Fiddleford comes over, looking equally as distressed as she feels. 

“Let’s get you back to bed, sis, you’re supposed to have that foot up,” he says, and Ripley’s brain shudders to a halt.

“Oh, you hurt your foot there, Missus Pines?” Susan asks, concerned, and Ripley has to fight the urge to laugh as she nods. One of Susan’s eyelids is bruise-blue and sagging slightly.

“Fell down the stairs, wasn’t lookin’ where I was goin’,” Ripley says, backing up out of the room. “Well, uh, well, I- well, I’ll just let ya’ll get back to it, then, s-sorry.”

Fidds is at her side more suddenly than she expects, her elbow in his hands, and once he’s got her back in the den and on the couch she does let a shrill noise bubble out of her.

“Mom? Sis? Tour?” she demands, and Fiddleford runs his hands over his head, looking guilty.

“We panicked, a-alright? Stan… a little more than me,” he adds, glancing over his shoulder at the door. “He- it’s an idea, at least- he’s uh, he’s… opening Ford’s house to do tours.”

“Of what?” Ripley explodes quietly, her voice a hiss. “Tours of what?! Our back room? What the fuck, Fidds, we can’t give tours of a place we live in!”

“It’s just until we can figure out somethin’ better,” Fiddleford argues, and she jabs a finger at him.

“We? This is a  _ we _ issue now?” she snaps, and he gives her a stern, narrow-eyed look over his glasses.

“It is a  _ group effort _ makin’ sure you an’ Stan as individuals or as a couple can survive the next few weeks while yer ankle’s on the mend,” he says, and she ducks her head, huffing in annoyance. 

“I’m not Toiba’s mom,” she says stubbornly. “I’m not- I’m not that person. I’m not her parent, I love her but she’s not mine, she’s Stan’s.”

“I know, I know,” Fiddleford says, sounding exhausted.

“And now everybody’s going to fucking- they’re gonna defer to me instead of him when it comes to his fucking baby,” she says, putting her face in her hands.

“I know, Ripley,” Fiddleford sighs.

“ _ Stan’s _ her dad,” she says desperately, and he nods when she looks up at him. “Fiddleford, they all know me as Ripley Pines, they’re all- they’re going to assume we’re married.”

“Well- I mean, that-” Fiddleford hedges.

“And they think I’m your enormous sasquatch sister,” she moans, and he nudges her arm.

“Here, now. Enough of that. We had to make up some kind of elaborate lie on the spot when the diner lady-”

“Susie,” Ripley mutters.

“-when she asked how come we didn’t act like we knew each other if we’re apparently livin’ together. Stan’s the one who came up with the distant relatives story, I’d only just said that it’d been a while and we’d changed since we last spoke.”

“But- her mother,” Ripley wails. “Are me and Stan married in this bizarre fiction, Fidds?”

“I- um,” Fiddleford pauses, unsure. “I think he said he’s the baby’s uncle?”

“ **_No_ ** ,” Ripley cries, grabbing a pillow off the couch and screaming into it until her face is red. 

“Better?” Fiddleford asks, once she comes up for air.

“He’s her  _ Dad _ ! She’s his  _ baby _ ! He’s gonna go around and tell the truth about _ that  _ at least or my fuckin’ god I  _ swear _ -”

“Ya don’t need to swear,” Fidds interrupts, and she huffs.

“I can’t pretend to be somebody’s mother, I refuse to pretend to be that baby’s only parent when I’m not the one who’s allowed to be her parent, and has he- has he forgotten that Ford’s supposed to come back at some point? What’re we gonna do, pretend  _ he’s _ Toiba’s Dad?”

“Well, we-” Fiddleford starts speculatively.

“We cannot!” she snaps back. “Fiddleford did- okay, did you guys even get the groceries you went to the store for, or did you guys somehow manage to do none of the groceries and all of the nightmares?”

“We got the groceries, they’re in the trunk,” Fiddleford says defensively. “And I called Amanda, so-”

“Who?” she interrupts, and he gives her a narrow look.

“My wife,” he says, and she nods immediately. “She’s a nurse, so she should be able to… do somethin’ about yer ankle. Mostly stuff like sports medicine, you know, torn ACL’s and such, so she probably knows a lot about how to fix your leg right up.”

“Okay. Okay. Question, do you know where Ford’s booze stash is?” she asks abruptly.

“Uh…  _ booze stash _ makes it sound like he has a problem,” Fiddleford says, laughing nervously. “Just a couple of bottles here and there for entertainin’, and of course, he didn’t, uh, do a lot of that-”

“Where,” Ripley says sharply.

“If’n I tell ya, you’re gonna get on the drink and make a mess of yourself,” he says slowly.

“I am  _ in pain _ and under  _ extreme duress _ , McGucket, do not force me to hike through the snow on a broke-ass ankle just to get to a liquor store, because then it really will look like we’ve got a problem, alright?” she snarls. He hesitates, and she drags her hands down her face, sighing. “Look, if you honestly think you cannot trust me with a bottle of whatever nerdy alcohol Ford has in his house- probably something stupid like port or brandy or some awful fucking cordial, I know his ass- then you be responsible for pouring it.”

“Okay…” he says doubtfully, standing. “Look, I, ah- my wife said she’ll come up here and take a look at your ankle, so just… don’t do anything that’ll make yer foot worse before she does.”

“Guck, it’s like you barely even know me,” Ripley says roughly, raising both eyebrows at him. “I’ve definitely never… accidentally made an injury worse before I could get medical help.”

“You’re usin’ a tone and it makes you sound like a liar,” he chides, but he reaches under a panel on the front of the sidetable and brings out a couple of bottles. Ripley beams at him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Ripley’s first thought is that the lady wearing scrubs and sighing reproachfully down at her is at least as tall as she is, maybe slightly taller. Her second thought is that she doesn’t get how Fiddleford got so lucky; the lady’s obviously some kind of nurse or doctor or something and the color of her hair makes Ripley think, unprompted, of burying her face in it.

“What do we have to say for ourselves?” the lady asks.

“You’re the second hottest medical professional I’ve ever seen,” Ripley says, slurring only a little. 

“Who was the first?” the lady- Amanda, she’s guessing- asks, looking mildly intrigued.

“Eight foot tall seven-eyed alien lady,” Ripley says, then, after a moment, “Shhh. I think Ford’s in love with her.”

“Sounds… like an interesting lady,” Amanda says diplomatically, crouching down. “I’m not surprised to find out Ford’s into the alien types. Can I take a look at your foot?”

“Twisted that one,” Ripley explains, and doesn’t fight the urge to make a sad little noise of pain when Amanda removes Ford’s rainboot. 

“Well, it’s definitely swollen- don’t know if it’s broken, though, that’s good-” Amanda says, pulling off the sock in a fluid movement. Ripley hisses, rolling her head back, and Amanda pauses, sucking in a breath. “Ma’am, you- you said you twisted this ankle?”

“Coming down the stairs to the basement,” Ripley says, nodding unsteadily.

“Was that before or after these hideous burns got infected?” Amanda replies sharply. Ripley pauses, shrugging a little.

“I mean, the burns are… you know, weeks old, I figured I was done worrying about infection,” Ripley admits. “S’why I stopped wrappin’ em. That and also I ran out of stuff.”

“You stopped… wrapping your feet,” Amanda repeats slowly. “Because you ran out of supplies.” 

Ripley is starting, unpleasantly, to feel as though she should have been significantly less intoxicated for her first meeting with this woman. She’s also wondering where Stan and Fidds are, the cowards. Amanda narrows her dark brown eyes for a moment, before reaching down and pulling Ripley’s left boot off.

“Ow, hey-” Ripley tries feebly, wincing at the stern expression on Amanda’s face when she peels the other sock off.

“I hesitate to ask,” Amanda says, “but for professional reasons I will. How, exactly, did you manage to burn both of your feet this badly?”

“I was… uh,” Ripley says, licking her lower lip. “I had to stand in a burning pit of, uh. Fiery coals.”

“...really?” Amanda asks, frowning.

“It’s alright, though, it’s- it’s nowhere near as bad as the other times she’s made me hurt myself,” Ripley says quickly, flapping a hand at her. “I was okay to stand and walk and uh, fight a bunch of people! And that was like, a month and a half ago!”

“Jesus Mary’n Joseph,” Amanda replies under her breath.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Ripley tries, and Amanda gives her such a fierce look that she immediately recoils. “Well! It’s... fine to walk on and everything.”

“And this is unrelated to what everybody’s referring to as the _ hostage misunderstanding _ that resulted in my husband’s broken glasses and bruised ribs and your broken nose, I assume?” Amanda asks sharply.

“I mean, I think we’re all in agreement that he deserved it?” Ripley tries. “We made up though, no harm done.”

“What about this?” Amanda asks, picking up Ripley’s right arm and frowning at her makeshift bandages. “Is this a _ sock _ ?”

“I accidentally broke a window,” Ripley says defensively, before changing tactics. “Ran out of bandages while I was treating Stan’s  _ much more serious and scary _ burn, which I bet nobody told you about yet, that’s really the thing you oughta be checkin’ out right now-”

“Fiddsy was right,” Amanda says, running a hand over her face. “Y’all are a catastrophe.”

Ripley doesn’t know how to respond to that; she lets Amanda McGucket attend to her feet and ankle with a sullen pout on her face. She smells like lemon and soap and something faintly floral underneath, and Ripley’s acutely aware of the fact that she smells like sweat and booze and the weird baby shampoo Fiddleford brought them.

Amanda stands to leave, after making Ripley’s leg comfortable, and Ripley clears her throat.

“Amanda?” she asks quietly.

“Yes, dear?” Amanda asks, glancing down at her.

“Ripley,” she replies, looking down. 

“Yeah, I know that. S’nice to make your acquaintance, Ripley,” Amanda says, and her voice sounds like she’s smiling but Ripley’s too intimidated to check.

Ripley puts her head down for a series of intermittent, dissatisfying sleeps; by the time she’s pulling herself back upright the window outside is black beyond the colored glass. She limps into the kitchen and stares at the table, which is organized into neat, sectioned-off piles of groceries, the empty shopping bags pressed flat on the counter.

“You’re awake,” Stan says desperately, and she mindlessly folds Toiba against her chest while he hustles off to the bathroom.

“Thought you guys went shopping…. Yesterday?” Ripley asks, and Fiddleford nods glumly in his chair. “Why isn’t any of the stuff put away, Gucket?”

“Mandy thought we needed more,” Fidds replies despondently. Ripley jiggles the baby in place a little, her mouth pressed against the warm fluff of her hair.

“We didn’t ask for this,” she says finally, her voice small.

“You’re not supposed to  _ have _ to ask for help,” Amanda says, stepping back into the kitchen from wherever she’d been. Ripley backs up against the counter, swallowing against a dry, swollen throat; she wants Mrs. McGucket to like her but she also desperately wants to avoid making her unhappy with her. It seems safest to just… not engage unless engaged, for now. 

Fiddleford meets Ripley’s eyes and he shrugs a little at her. She starts to say something, and a kid- a little kid with a mop of chestnut brown hair flopping over his eyes- barrels into the room, wearing corduroy overalls that look unnervingly like the kid’s from the Shining. Fiddleford stands to greet him, the kid pawing at his shirt and the sling on his arm.

“Aaaah, it’s a- small one,” Ripley says, and Fiddleford blinks at her, before hefting the kid up onto his hip one-handed.

“Yep, this is what happens if you let a baby keep growin’,” he says slowly. “Tate, this is Miss Pines whose house this is, remember what we said ‘bout her lettin’ you play here?”

“Thnkyemiss,” Tate mumbles all in one shot, burying his face in his dad’s neck to avoid having to say anything else. Ripley deeply relates to this, although the mere concept of a child running around playing in this hellhole of a house makes her more uncomfortable than it ought to, considering the wiggling infant currently in her arms.

“I took a look at that burn ya mentioned on Stan,” Amanda announces. “Y’didn’t do a bad job treatin’ it, for an amateur.”

“Thanks,” Ripley says, brightening up and giving Toiba a jiggle.

“And then he told me about how you looked when you first got here ‘bout seven weeks back,” Amanda says flatly. Ripley can’t physically back up any farther than she already has, but she’d like to make an attempt anyway. “Interestingly, you didn’t mention that you ‘accidentally’ broke an upstairs window by  _ punching through _ it and-”

“Stan-  you know what that’s also very interesting because  _ Stan _ -” Ripley pauses, glancing over at Fiddleford, who shrugs at her. “ _ Stan _ is- very- he’s-”

“You broke both of your knees how long ago?” Amanda asks, and she’s even got a little notebook out.

“ _ Ford _ broke ‘em,” Ripley says desperately, and Amanda raises both eyebrows at her. Ripley swallows tightly. “And it was, uh, three years, seven months… one week and two days ago.”

“But who’s counting,” Fiddleford murmurs. 

“Dinner’s in five,” Amanda says, and when Stan finally comes back from the bathroom Ripley makes a beeline for him.

“You and I needa have a talk after dinner,” she hisses, and he looks… appropriately guilty, which is good.


	6. watching the ships that go sailing

Before the past couple of days, Stan had a hard time imagining the kind of person that could remotely intimidate the battlescarred woman who’d been spat out of Ford’s doomsday device in his place and had just _accepted_ every weird detail that she met.

 Now he knows: every time Amanda brought the conversation back around to the subject of the various ways Ripley and Stan had hurt, neglected, or downright abused their bodies at dinner tonight, Ripley’d gone red and squirmy, her eyes trained on the mysterious casserole Fidds and Amanda had made together. Ripley’s apparent fear of nurses would have been kinda funny if it didn’t start to feel like she’d had a reason to be afraid of people asking her this kind of question before; or if she didn’t respond to this fear by trying to not-so-subtly direct Amanda’s interrogation over onto Stan.

 The two of them get comfortable with Toiba between them, Ripley stretched out and glassy-eyed on the bed as she rests her open hand on Toiba’s tummy.

“You said you wanted to talk,” Stan prompts gently, and she shoots him a guilty look.

 “There’s three more people in this house,” she says softly, and he nods. She swallows, looking at the baby. “There’s… I haven’t been working downstairs.”

 “You said Ford’s okay for now,” Stan reminds her. “You said when you split up from him he’d been gone for more’n ten years-”

 “Twelve,” she mutters. “But… time travel sucks, Stan.”

 “Do you think he might be like, twelve years older than me when he gets home?” Stan asks, and she hesitates.

 “He might be. Or, you know… a lot more. I mean, he won’t- if he came home tomorrow he’d be at least twelve years older than you, because it would cause a paradox if he somehow got here before he met me, unless he got here and then left but then that would mean he was lying during our entire time together and he’s- I mean, it’s possible, but you know what he’s like, I doubt he could maintain a lie that long,” she sighs.

 He lays his hand over hers, running his thumb lightly over the scarred skin there.

 “I don’t, really,” he admits softly.

 “You don’t?” she asks slowly, and he gives her a tight smile.

 “Know him. Not really. Not as a grown man, not- the person he is now.” She frowns and sighs, and he continues. “These two in our house, they’re college friends of his. They know him better than I do, and I didn’t know they existed before all this.”

 “Oh,” she says.

 “It’s kinda nice having other people here,” he says diplomatically, and she winces. “It’s nice to have variety, at least. Nice to know we’re not totally on our own.”

 “You really trust these guys?” she asks lowly, and he sighs.

 “Ford trusted them, didn’t he?”

 “S’not good enough,” she says darkly. “He trusted a lot of people he shouldn’t’ve.”

 “What happened to most other people havin’ goodness in their hearts?” Stan asks.

 “That was before we got some other people,” she mutters sullenly.

 “Ripley, what’s the worst that could happen?” he asks, and she chews on her lip for a moment or two.

 “One of the three of them gets possessed by Bill and kills the baby,” she says dully. “One of the three of them gets possessed by Bill and kills you and the baby. One of the three of them gets possessed and kills both of you and also me and Ford never gets to come home. One of the three of them gets possessed by-”

 “Okay, so it seems like- uh- it’s this Bill jackass who’s the main problem, really,” Stan points out, and she hesitates. He reaches over, giving her upper arm a squeeze. “The two of us can handle anything that isn’t a supernatural shitlord wearing another person.”

 “Yeah,” she says quietly.

 “Are there any ways to… make it so he can’t do that?” Stan asks doubtfully, after a minute. “Ford seemed terrified-”

 “Ford’d already done the dumb thing of giving Bill permission to use his body whenever he wanted,” Ripley says, and Stan wrinkles his nose. “There’s things we can do. There’s ways. Vigilance is the strongest thing, but- there’s- there’s ways.”

 “I mean- I guess it’d be like whatever it was you’d do to stop that demon lady a’yours from takin’ _you_ over,” Stan points out, and she clamps her mouth shut, taking her glasses off and depositing them on the nightstand.

 “I don’t know,” she says, curling around the baby’s sleeping shape. “I mean, yes, I’m gonna- I’ll see what I can do about the whole Bill thing, but- I don’t know if I trust these people yet, is all.”

 “Amanda fixed your ankle up,” Stan says. “And we know Fidds, kinda.”

 “He tried to erase my memories,” she whispers. “I kept the memory gun. He could be trying to get the gun back. They could be trying to trick us into being comfortable and revealing where it is, or trying to trick us into giving them access to the parts of the house where they think the gun might be.”

 Stan considers this. Toiba makes a little gurgling cooing noise, and they catch each other smiling faintly over her head.

 “What do you want to do?” Stan asks gently.

 “I dunno,” she sighs. “Give it a couple days, I guess, give me a chance to see how on guard I gotta be while I’m settin’ up the Bill stuff.”

 “Okay, yeah,” Stan says. “We give it a couple days, we’ll see how we feel about it then. If they try to hurt anybody before then, you can beat the shit out of’em.”

 “Yeah,” Ripley echoes. Stan gives her shoulder another tentative squeeze.

 “Poor Aunt Ripley,” he says quietly.

 “Heh,” she huffs, but otherwise doesn’t speak again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Stan doesn’t like that he sees less of her than he’s used to, but after a couple of tense days tiptoeing around the McGuckets Ripley emerges from the basement, covered in way more dust than she ought to be but grinning grimly nonetheless.

 “Did you know Ford had a secret basement?” she asked happily, limping into ~~Ford’s~~ _their_ bedroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another around her wet hair.

 “I met you in the secret basement,” Stan replies.

“Another, secret-er secret basement,” Ripley corrects, and he frowns and shrugs.

 “So what’s in the secret basement?” he asks, and she puts her hands on her hips.

 “Ford left a bunch of stuff behind that’ll help us with the Bill thing,” she says brightly. “Also, your brother? Definitely a weird cultist. Also, your brother? Unbearably messy. I can’t believe we never ended up in an apartment long enough for me to find out how bad he is about piling up all the clutter. Also- just- wow, he’s a weird cultist, you don’t wanna know what it’s like down there.”

 “Duly noted,” Stan replies, glancing away as she pulls on various clothing items. “It’ll- It’ll be nice when he’s home, though, won’t it?”

 “Of course,” Ripley says, sounding surprised as she climbs into bed with them and delivers a smooch to Toiba’s head.

Stan reaches over, taking her hand.

“So what do you think? Can we trust them?”

“Too soon to say,” she mutters, twisting away from him and onto her back.

 “You wanna give it some more time?” he asks, glancing down at the baby’s face.

 “Give it another week, at least,” Ripley replies. “That’ll give me enough time to set up the protection, I’ll have the unicorn stuff by then.”

 “Unicorn stuff?” Stan asks, and she turns to smile thinly at him.

 “Don’t ask. Another one of Ford’s weirdnesses.”

 He doesn’t ask; she’s asleep soon enough anyway.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 “McGucket,” Ripley says, bundling herself up- most of the snow is gone now, but she’s still too cold to be able to go out of the house in comfort. Fiddleford and Amanda both look up from what they’re doing, and Ripley sighs. “Fidds, I mean. Do you remember how to get around the woods here?”

 “A little bit, but don’tcha want to ride in the car if you’re headed out?” Fiddleford asks, looking up from a sheaf of typewritten papers.

 “Nah, I’m goin’ into the _woods_ woods,” Ripley says, wrapping a scarf around her neck. “You’re comin’ with me so I don’t get beared to death.”

 “Beared- oh, no, I can’t-” Fidds says, backing up with an expression of pure panic.

 Stan and Amanda exchange glances; a consensus is reached, it seems, because Amanda puts a grounding hand on the middle of Fiddleford’s back.

 “Ripley’ll look out for you, Fiddsy,” Amanda says cheerfully, giving him a pat. “She’s got that lightsaber and everything, baby.”

 “Well- yeah,” Ripley says, blinking.

 “Yeah,” Stan says, warming up. “I mean, she’s a total badass.”

 “Young ears, Stan,” Amanda says swiftly, pointing at Tate.

 “She’s… a total badbutt?” Stan asks slowly.

 “How am I s’posed to keep- listen, this- look, I ain’t exactly a tough guy, I won’t be much good out there-” Fiddleford tries desperately.

 “Oh, but I-” Ripley says, flustered. Her eyes dart between Stan and Amanda, clearly loath to leave Stan outnumbered, and Stan clears his throat.

 “Yer just goin’ to keep an eye out, Fidds, make sure nothin’ sneaks up on Aunt Ripley,” Stan says encouragingly.

 “There ya go,” Amanda agrees, beaming. “Get yer coat on, Fiddsy, you an’ Miss Ripley’re gonna have a blast out there today.”

 Stan waits until the door slams shut and Amanda’s back in the kitchen before flashing a coy grin at her.

 “Okay, lady, I know why ** _I_** wanted them both out of the house, but what’s your excuse?” he asks, running the pad of his thumb over the baby’s chubby little arm.

“Will you accept altruistic intent as an excuse?” she asks, pouring water into a kettle.

 “Hhhheck no,” Stan says, stumbling a little as Tate toddles in and out of the room.

 “You poor thing,” she sighs, pouring tea into a couple of mugs. She holds both of them out for him to see. “Which one do you want, Stanley?”

 He squints, leaning over Toiba a little. “Uh… Kiss Me Twice? What is that, a band name or somethin’?”

 She smiles sadly, walking over the mug with the pencil-shaped handle, holding it up so he can see printed on the bottom, “...I’m a double major!”

 “Wow, Ford,” Stan sighs. “What a nerd.”

 “I gave him that mug for his birthday,” Amanda replies quietly. Stan winces, and she snorts a tiny little laugh at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry about it, sugar, Ford really is a nerd.”

“It’s weird you guys were friends,” Stan mutters, looking down into his tea.

 “It’s weird that you two weren’t,” she replies, taking a seat with her own steaming mug.

 “So- so why did you want Ripley and Fidds out in the woods together today?” Stan asks abruptly, and she flashes a grin at him. The breath catches in Stan’s throat, and he takes a sip of tea so he can pretend the sudden radiating warmth in his chest is from the drink.

 “Oh, well. They haven’t been gettin’ along as well as they could be- Ford and Fiddsy used to get in fights like that in college- we usedta call it the Cold War,” she adds, and he snorts into his tea. “Workin’ together on a project always fixed’em right up, though. Figured it can’t hurt to see how much like Ford the wife is.”

 “Hah, yeah. They couldn’t be more different, though, she- she’s not a giant asshole, for one,” Stan grumbles, and Amanda clears her throat at him until he realizes that the silent McGucket child is gazing wide-eyed up at him. “Uh- sorry.”

“What about you, Stan?” she asks quietly.

 “I just thought it’d be nice to hang out without either of them checkin’ the room for the other one,” he admits, and she laughs quietly again.

 “Well, let’s hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship, then. What did she say she was gonna do with him in the woods today?”

 “Something about shaving a unicorn,” Stan says slowly, relishing the words, and Amanda laughs again.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 “What do you think, kid?” Stan asks softly, gently fingering the blue stone pendant around Ripley’s neck. There’s another, paler stone looped clumsily onto the chain now, wrapped in silver wire and the iridescent white threads she and Fiddleford had called unicorn hair.

 “I’m older than you, first of all,” Ripley says, tying the mate to her new moonstone pendant onto Stan’s wrist with a thin leather strap. “And I think the unicorn hair barrier works well enough to protect all of us even if we’re not inside, you know magic’s more of a… super imprecise art ruled by intention more than anything else-”

 “Ripley,” Stan tries to cut in.

 “-and the intention is unmistakable, protecting the people in this house from the likes of Bill,” she finishes, holding his hand in a loose grip. “I mean, we shouldn’t have to worry about, fr’nstance, going to the store or the other side of town as long as the barrier’s maintained here. I’ll have to renew it every so often, but that’s, like, a years and years scenario, so-”

 “Okay, but- I mean, I’m really glad you got this anti-demon thing working-”

 “I’ll make a pendant for Toiba when she’s walking around, but as long as you’re holding her most of the time- or I am, or whatever- she’ll be safe. The pendants are more like just-in-cases situations, you know,” she continues relentlessly. “I mean, double the protection, right? Like, uh, how you put two condoms to make _sure_ that you really don’t get-”

 “Okay, wow, first of all,” Stan interrupts, a little more firmly. “That’s absolutely not how that works and we’re gonna have to get you some basic, like… ‘where do babies come from and how do condoms work’ education sooner or later.”

 “I mean, do I have to?” Ripley sighs.

“Second of all, I mean- how do you feel about the McGuckets?” Stan says, and she freezes, licking her lower lip. “It’s been another week. I mean, I like Amanda, I think you like her too, you know? She’s nice, she’s… she’s helpful. She’s good at patching people up, and she was friends with Ford, so… I think she’s nice. D’you think she’s nice?”

 “I- I mean, maybe,” Ripley mutters, hunching her shoulders a little. “She’s… she’s nice. She seems nice. I’m not sayin’ she’s not… nice. I just… ain’t used to nice unless it’s, um. Not really nice.”

“You trust me,” Stan replies, and she snorts.

 “You’re not nice, you’re good, there’s- there’s a difference,” she insists, and Stan sighs.

 “And at what point **_do_** you know the difference, Ripley?” he asks, and she clamps her mouth shut, looking ashamed. Stan sighs, pressing his forehead against hers. “You wanna give it more time?”

 “I’m being stupid, right?” she asks hollowly.

 “You’re not bein’ stupid,” he mutters back. “I know stupid, okay.”

 “I know most people aren’t gonna be like- aren’t gonna-” she hisses out a breath. “It’s different here. It’s _soft_ here. They’re not- people don’t just try to hurt you for no reason here, right?”

 “You and Ford sure got fucked up by those demon buddies, huh?” Stan asks, and she lets out a soft, sobbing laugh. He presses his mouth instinctively against her hairline, exhaling into her hair. It still smells like blood and pine resin from her trip in the woods today. “We’ll give it some time before we make a decision about the McGuckets, then.”

“Thanks,” she mutters, and he grunts softly in response.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Spring comes in stages; Amanda and Fiddleford and Tate leave for a couple of weeks after making sure Ripley and Stan are healed up and capable of making it to the grocery store on their own. Groups come in for ‘tours’ once or twice a month; Ripley keeps out of it, bewildered by the notion of strangers coming in to gawk at Ford’s shit.

 Ripley talks to Susan’s boss at Greasy’s, and he lets her take a five hour shift or two during the weekdays. She usually walks to the diner and back, complaining about the shitty too-cold weather out loud. Sometimes something answers back to her from the woods; the fourth or fifth time it happens, a gnome pops out of the underbrush and demands that she say that to his face.

 She doesn’t want to admit it to anyone- not yet, anyway- but Ripley loves Gravity Falls. It smells clean and it’s calm and it’s different. Sometimes she comes home with handfuls of random shit- rocks and gravel and small twigs and the early budding leaves of spring- and she doesn’t remember why it was important to pick them up but it feels nice that she’s _allowed_ , that she’s not afraid that it’ll lead a trail straight to her and Stan and the baby.

 The night after the McGuckets come back to stay with them for the summer, Ripley dreams of the temple, of a six-fingered human priestess with Ford’s eyes and nose over a bare, skinless grin, and she shrieks the house into startled awakeness. She’s not entirely sure what, exactly, spills from her mouth

_notashanotashanotashano_

 but the naked pity on Stan’s face- on Amanda’s- on Fiddleford’s- makes her want to bury herself alive.

She starts to wonder if she should even be allowed around the baby, around the McGuckets’ little boy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Hey,” Ripley says; she’s still wearing the pink Greasy’s apron, and a couple of pens are still stuck behind her ears, and she should have stopped by her and Stan’s room before edging her way into what they’re calling the ‘guest room’ but what is literally the pullout couch in Ford’s ground floor study. She should have changed or at least swapped shirts before making eye contact with Amanda but now she’s here and Amanda’s smiling and oh god she hasn’t said anything else-

 “I need your help,” she blurts out, and Amanda starts nodding immediately, like she’s been expecting this. Ripley clears her throat, continuing, “It’s- it’s for Stan’s birthday.”

 “Oh,” Amanda says, looking a little more surprised than anything else. “Well- okay. Yeah, hon, what do you need?”

 “I need to break into the elementary school,” Ripley says, scratching the back of her neck, “and it’s not that I don’t think Stan and Fidds can do it, I just- ah- I think they’re, um, not the best candidates for stealth right now.”

Amanda presses her fingertips together. “I… see. Not that I necessarily disagree with you, hon, but- uh- why?”

 “It’s Memorial Day this weekend,” Ripley explains. Amanda waits until it becomes clear that no further explanation is forthcoming.

 “I assume there’s something inside the school that you want to give Stan?” she asks finally.

 “Yup. Ford left three field journals that help with,” Ripley waves a hand, “the Evil Science stuff he was working on, and in one of those journals is a map to a crashed alien space ship him and Fidds found. Stan’s got one, and Ford was super proud of how he hid the other one in the school, so I know exactly where to find it once I’m inside, and, uh… I think it’ll help us find Ford but also I think it’ll… make Stan feel better just to have it.”

 “That’s really smart,” Amanda says quietly, and Ripley’s face starts burning for some reason.

 “Anyway, uh, so yeah! I found out from Susie that the entire town basically shuts down for the start of fishing season on Memorial Day, so-”

 “Perfect time to head over to the school,” Amanda finishes, nodding enthusiastically. “Okay! I see where you’re going with this, sugar, let’s- let’s do it! What’re we gonna need?”

 “Well, mostly just, uh- gloves and I guess, uh, maybe DNA doesn’t exist in the early eighties yet so we probably don’t have to worry about leaving anything other than fingerprints, I… guess?” Ripley frowns. “I don’t- I’ve been places that they can scan the dust particles in the air for your DNA, but I’m pretty sure that’s not possible here yet.”

 “Yeah, I’m… gonna say no, it doesn’t exist yet here,” Amanda says slowly. “Also, it’s a tiny little logging town’s elementary school, I’m pretty sure even if it did exist nobody would put forth the effort. Let’s just try to avoid makin’ a mess, right?”

 “Right!” Ripley grins tentatively at her. “So- this Monday while the boys are hangin’ out with the baby here, you and me, the elementary school, wearin’ gloves and masks just in case we get spotted?”

 “It’s a date,” Amanda says warmly.

“Ahahaha, well,” Ripley says, coughing. “Yes. It is a date. In the calendar. Which we are agreeing upon to meet.”

 “Are you gonna be alright?” Amanda asks.

“I’m gonna go upstairs and change,” Ripley wheezes. “Good- good talkin’ to you.”

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 The journal is beautiful; the red leather and gleaming gold leaf hand practically new compared to the battered book in Stan’s possession. Amanda grins at her in the dusk, pulling the bandanna off of her hair as they climb into the front seat of Amanda’s car.

 “We did it,” Amanda says happily, massaging her hands. “Also, I’m gonna kick Ford’s tail in for makin’ a gosh-danged death trap in the middle of an elementary school.”

 “Hah, get in line,” Ripley replies, rubbing the cover with her hand a few times. “I know I said this was gonna be for Stan’s birthday, but I don’t want to wait three weeks to give it to him, I wanna do it now.”

 “Me too, just to see his face,” Amanda agrees. They smile at each other, briefly, before Ripley looks down at the cover.

 “Suppose I ought to read it first, just so we can know if it’s got the map to Crash Site Omega or not before I give it over,” she says quietly.

 “Ford named the place, I assume,” Amanda says drily.

 “An accurate assumption,” Ripley replies, huffing.

 “So-” Amanda starts slowly, drumming her fingertips on the wheel. “So I thought I’d talk t’you about it, but, ah- Fiddsy an’ I aren’t goin’ back to Palo Alto at the end of the summer. We’ve talked it out, and I’ve got a job up at the clinic downtown all lined up, and there’s a plant Fidds got a job at, nothin’ fancy but they need somebody to set up their computers and such, and after the end of the summer when us and Tate are moved out of your cabin, we’ll be movin’ into this little house down the road.”

 “Oh,” Ripley says, hugging the journal to her chest.

 “Yep,” Amanda says lightly.

 “What about your friends in California, though?” Ripley asks carefully.

 “Well, honey, you two are our friends, too,” Amanda says, and Ripley swallows tightly.

 “Well,” she says, and can’t think of anything else to say. Amanda clears her throat.

 “May I ask you somethin’, Ripley?”

 “Okay,” Ripley mutters.

 “I know- bits an’ pieces,” she says thoughtfully. “I know that you’ve… been hurt before. That… person, though. What were they like?”

 “She,” Ripley says, her mouth going dry. “She, uh. I dunno.” She glances nervously over, but Amanda’s not looking her way. “She wanted things from me and I don’t always know what they are, but she- she wanted me to be hers. She said that she’d take care of me if I’d help her find Ford and give Ford to Bill, and that she’d help me take care of Ford so Bill couldn’t hurt him, and- she said… other stuff.”

 “Ah. This Bill fella I’ve heard so much about,” Amanda says darkly. “What other stuff’d she say, hon?”

 “Aw, you know. Stuff.” Ripley hesitates. “She thought human feelings tasted good, or something. She liked hurting me but she liked me hurting myself more. She said there was a reason nobody before Ford’d ever wanted-”

She drums her fingers on the journal’s cover a few times.

 “She, uh, she said Ford didn’t really, either. Because I’m not smart and I’m not good but he’d needed a bodyguard at the time and then when I couldn’t be good at even that one stupid single thing he needed he got rid of me like-” Ripley chances another glance at Amanda. The other woman’s mouth is in a line, just a slim slash of lipstick in a tan face, and her dark brown eyes are gazing steadfastedly out the window.

“Anyway, so. If you ever wanna know what kind of person a demon’d fall in love with or whatever,” Ripley mutters softly.

“She sounds like a terrible person,” Amanda says tightly.

“She wasn’t all bad. Nobody’s _all_ bad,” Ripley says hurriedly. “I mean- just- I think, um, I think she thought she was showing me what she thought was her best side. I think she thought she could bring out my best side.”

 “You said she enjoyed hurting you,” Amanda says.

“I think it meant something different to her,” Ripley mutters, sure she’s forgetting to include some vital piece of information.

 “I think if somebody loved you, they wouldn’t make ya scared to go to sleep at night,” Amanda says sharply, and Ripley winces. Amanda rubs the side of her forehead, sighing. “I think if somebody loved you they wouldn’t… do any of that stuff she did to you.”

 “I guess,” Ripley says quietly. “She used to say that about Ford, too, though.”

“What a mess,” Amanda replies softly.

“Sorry,” Ripley mumbles. The car is silent for a few moments.

“You know what,” Amanda says. “Let’s take some milkshakes home to the boys and the kids, huh?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ripley says, and Amanda starts driving in the direction of Greasy’s.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ripley shakes Stan awake at midnight, her face unreadable in the darkness.

“Stan,” she hisses.

“Don’t wake Toiba up,” he mumbles, peering blearily at her. “Whazzit?”

“Happy birthday, Stan,” she says, and he stares at her for several long seconds. She grins unsteadily at him. “Got you a present.”

 “Birthday?” Stan repeats fuzzily, and she gives him a peck on the forehead.

 “Wait here.”

 She returns with something wrapped in paper; before he opens it he knows the heft and shape of one of Ford’s journals. He tears the paper off, and the number two shines up at him in the palm of a golden hand.

“You found one of the others,” he says, and she clambers back into bed with him, pressing her face against his shoulder. “How?”

 “Amanda helped,” she explains, which… doesn’t explain much about his question, but does explain the way she’s warmed up a little to the McGuckets in the past couple of weeks. He flips through the pages until he finds it: one third of the diagram Ford left behind, explaining how to steer the portal in the basement.

 “This is incredible,” he says finally, and she makes another smooching noise in the vicinity of his bicep.

 “Also,” she says softly, stifling a yawn. “It’s been four months since I met you. I’m real glad I did.”

 “Thanks,” he says awkwardly. He resists the urge to run the book down to the basement and get to work, placing it instead on the nightstand.

 “Stan?” she asks, waiting until he’s horizontal again before pulling the sheet up to tuck around him and the sleeping infant. “I love you.”

 “I know. I love you too,” he replies, stifling a yawn. She puts her hand in his and he gives it a squeeze. He thinks he knows the answer, but he’ll ask anyway: “You made up your mind on if we trust the McGuckets?”

The silence stretches out as she thinks. He doesn’t point out that they’ve been in and out of their house for the better part of three months, or that the thing she was most afraid of with Bill can’t happen now, or that she likes and trusts them sometimes, when she’s not thinking too hard. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles and waits.

 “I think it can’t hurt,” she says finally. He nods a little, and they spend a little time watching the ceiling in silence before going back to sleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

A year marches past in a series of birthdays: Fiddleford in August and Amanda in October and Ripley in mid-December. She spends it lying on the rooftop, wishing the Ripley who just turned seven a happier birthday than the ones she vaguely recalls from what’s left of her childhood. Toiba’s first birthday is a fun little affair, Tate’s following swiftly on the Ides of March.

 Stan has a very bad idea in April; what follows is the first actual fight he and Ripley have in the entire time they’ve lived together. She tells him that he can’t just disappear; he asks if anyone would even notice, tells her that he’s already Ford to the people of this town, that nobody’s been looking for him in the year since he came to Gravity Falls. She tells him it’s not forever, just until Ford comes home, and he snarls back a simple question, _when?_

She doesn’t come up from the basement for three days after the shouting match is over. She doesn’t feel like herself- she feels like something else, wearing her skin, lying in wait. She replays the fight in her head; she was so angry that she could have taken a swing at him, and what kind of monster is she that she’d even want to do something like that?

 It doesn’t matter that she didn’t. She’s pretty sure none of them can afford to trust her, after all.

Stan doesn’t join her in the lab the way he normally would. It’s right that she be alone. She’s the one who’s taken Ford’s place in this world and time, literally. He shouldn’t kill the real Stan just so he can keep Ford alive. She shouldn’t be wasting time doing anything that isn’t bringing him home, anyway-

_you only deserved to live as long as you had worth to him_

 -it’s Fiddleford who comes downstairs, which can’t be right because Fidds never does come downstairs, and he’s telling her to come up into the house, that the kids and Stan and Mandy miss her, that it’s dark and scary down here and wouldn’t it be better upstairs where everybody else is? And-

  _a tongue against her neck a hand tangled in her hair you’re mine you’remineyou’remine_

 -she doesn’t know how she ends up on the floor of the elevator, just that she’s crying, just that Fidds smells like clean laundry and she can’t stop crying into his chest, and Fidds isn’t _her_ , he’s everything she wasn’t, and she’s dead, and he’s alive, and Ripley killed her and now nobody’s going to want her the way Tasha wanted her because she’s fucking everything up with Stan, she’s fucked _everything_ up with Stan.

Fidds shushes her gently, tells her that no, she didn’t.

She and Stan dance around each other for a few more days before he slides an official-looking paper across the table at her by way of apology. It’s not a death certificate; it’s a copy of a Missing Persons report for Shayna Pines. It’s not the same as totally obliterating himself for Ford’s sake; Ripley finds herself crushingly grateful.

 She’s going through her old things- stuff she brought over from portalside, even though she hasn’t used or looked at most of it other than her journal for the past year- and finds the slip of coated vellum Rick Sanchez’d given her with his phone number on it. It occurs to her that he should be able to help fix this situation faster than the rest of them put together, but when she dials the number she just gets a grating tonal sound and a recorded message stating that the number she dialed is not in service, please try again later.

 Time travel, Ripley decides, is stupid and she hates it. She resolves to try calling every so often until the number works, but it’s easy to forget.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 “Where are we going?” Stan asks from the passenger seat.

 “Birthday picnic for Dad, right Tee?” Ripley asks cheerfully, and the three-year-old nods seriously.

 It’s a beautiful day out in the forest, and that Corduroy kid who comes in to Greasy’s gave her the directions to this place. Trees never grow on the sloping hill nestled in the deepest part of the valley, so the lumberjacks are never out there. The grass is thin and nothing else grows easily there, so most of the animals- and, Danny’d added in a conspiratorial tone, most of the _animals_ \- tend to avoid it. There’s some kind of iron deposit that throws off compasses and navigators, so hikers and climbers steer clear completely. Not even campers go there, so- as Danny’d pointed out, clumsily trying to navigate the topic of the strange little Pines child- somebody could just run around in the grass barefoot and not worry about glass or anything like that.

 It’s peaceful and quiet and isolated and clean. The only noise is the barely-audible whistle of the wind in the trees at the edges of the wide clearing.

 Stan and Toiba take a small walk around the Stanleymobile, hand in hand, as Ripley lays out a picnic blanket and some food.

 “This is nice,” Stan whispers to her later, and gives her hand a squeeze. Toiba runs up to them, squinting in the sunlight, and Stan sits up a little. “Yeah, kiddo, what is it?”

 “I’ll go look,” Ripley offers, following Toiba over to a small boulder rising up from the softly rippling grass. “I like this big rock you found.”

 “Hear,” Toiba says insistently, and Ripley crouches down. Toiba picks up a handful of pebbles off the top of the boulder and throws them at the ground with the light patter of rain on a tin roof.

 “Yeah, the big rock had some little rocks, and-” Ripley pauses, sucking on her lower lip. She glances at Toiba, then sits down on the boulder, wiggling her shoe off.

 “What’re you two doin’ over there?” Stan calls over to them.

 “Hearing,” Ripley replies. She holds the shoe up over her head, waggling her eyebrows at Toiba to see if this time it’ll make the girl laugh. (It does not.) She whacks her shoe down onto the ground as hard as she can, and it makes a flat, metallic _tttank_ noise.

 “This,” Ripley says, grinning, “was a good place to come for Dad’s birthday, wasn’t it?”

 “S’loud,” Toiba comments, nodding.


End file.
